The future is not digital

We live in an increasingly efficient and optimised world that allows us to do tasks in a day that, even just 20 years ago, took weeks to complete. We have tools that allow all of us to reach new heights in terms of knowledge that were once accessible to only a selected few.

Today, we can order a custom-made suit produced hundreds, if not thousands, of miles away from the comfort of our armchair at home. We have the opportunity to get to know new flames via an app, choosing him or her based on the profile he or she has built for the public. We can talk to relatives and friends located on the other side of the world, take wonderful photos or movies of us at our best (and sometimes the very opposite) moments, and visit virtually any place in the world, learning all the details without having to walk through the front door.

However, the more we progress in this ever-more efficient world, the more we feel we are missing something: physical experience. This includes late-night dinners with close friends, strolling through the high street exploring small stores, touching handcrafted objects, smelling inviting scents, and tasting exotic flavours.

This is the question I asked myself when I founded my company, Chora. On the one hand, I wanted to apply my 20+ years of experience in the digital world, but on the other hand, I also wanted to explore and deepen my knowledge of sensations and emotions.

I firmly believe that digital technology will increasingly help humans with all those micro activities that can be delegated, such as making an appointment for a car service or shopping when food in the refrigerator runs out.
In a new dimension that will be increasingly interconnected and standardised, systems will increasingly communicate, and our digital extension will be able to handle many of today’s manual and repetitive tasks.

However, what we do with our free time will be up to us.

Until now, this available time has usually been used to do more things and produce more, which aligns with this model of extreme efficiency that drives our lives and is increasingly virtualising them. However, this is taking place at the expense of our well-being and inner peace.

Today, I have noticed an increasing tendency to make everything more efficient by digitising. Every process in our daily lives, whether in the private or business world, is being analysed to
potentially be somehow simplified or digitised. Every day, new start-ups are born with innovative ideas and products that focus on making a process or task that until then was carried out or experienced faster and more automated.

However, the human experience is not digital but physical, and it is important to understand that we cannot completely replace real experiences. We can find a balance that allows us to live more fully while maintaining contact with the emotions that identify us.

Listening to a vinyl record, enjoying a glass of wine outdoors, or walking barefoot in the grass are all conductive experiences to human well-being, and it will be increasingly important to preserve these experiences to feel like our real selves. The real turning point, then, will be when solutions emerge that amplify digital experiences without replacing them and where the time gained from automation can be reinvested in real experiences and emotions aimed at rediscovering oneself rather than increased productivity.

Therefore, in the future, companies will have to be designed with a human-first approach, focused on creating authentic experiences where human beings are at the centre — even in B2B — because before B2C and B2B, we are H2H (Human to Human). In this context, emotions and senses become integral to business strategies. Companies must return to considering the well-being and satisfaction of their customers as a key element of their strategy, not just performance and time/cost efficiency.

The future will belong to companies that can properly synthesise and assimilate technology while preserving and enhancing the depth of the human experience.

The question we should ask ourselves then is: How can we build authentic experiences in an increasingly digital world?