Peering into the Future: Where Will Tech Take Education, Marketing, and Social Impact?

Technology has always had a clear symbiotic relationship with education and branding. From the earliest forms of stone carving to today’s online classes in the metaverse, technology has constantly reshaped education. The result is usually an improvement in how we learn, retain, and disseminate information and knowledge. 

Writing was the first big technology to revolutionize education by providing humans with a means to record information and pass it through time more efficiently. While oral tradition continued to be an important form of education, writing allowed it to pass from generation to generation in a more unbiased, persistent, and faithful manner.

The invention of the printing press further democratized access to knowledge by making books and pamphlets more affordable and widely available. Individuals all over the world were able now to access information previously intended for the elite class, allowing them to educate themselves. This flash of intellectualism among the masses would eventually lead to social revolutions that shaped the world as we know it today.

The advent of the digital age and the invention of the internet took this a step further. Today, we have access to virtually all of the information humanity has created and collected over its history. This information can also be accessed immediately and across many mediums, which not only makes it more accessible in terms of reaching it but also processing it.

With just a few clicks, learners can now access a wealth of information through online courses and educational platforms, greatly surpassing what any given traditional education institution could provide. Today, universities are more sorts of gatekeepers to certain certifications and career advantages than knowledge itself.

The same technologies that have revolutionized education have had the same effect on branding, changing how businesses connect with consumers to build their brand identities. Whereas branding was largely limited to physical signage, print advertisements, and word-of-mouth marketing in the past, it now has a seemingly endless number of channels.

The paradigm shift brought to branding by the digital era, where social media and gaming platforms offer unprecedented opportunities for direct interaction and engagement, is still going strong. The connections between brands and consumers are now more authentic and stronger than ever before, giving consumers a chance to become part of something bigger through user-generated content.

This change in the nature of education and branding has led to an ecosystem in which social impact is the new protagonist. As consumers now are more conscious of everything going on a social, environmental, and cultural level, as well as being more connected to brands, companies can no longer ignore the nature of their impact on the world. In this sense, social media has become one of the most important channels.

On one side, consumers leverage social media to voice concerns, coordinate movements, and hold companies accountable on an unprecedented level. Missteps or campaigns lacking authenticity rapidly spark backlash as audiences critique motivations and demand genuine advocacy.  Such was the case of Pepsi in 2017 when it failed to connect with its audiences by failing to resonate with its audience, leading its social impact campaign to be received as a tone-deaf marketing stunt. 

With technologies like the metaverse, AI, and spatial computing continuing to develop rapidly, predicting what branding, education, and social impact will look like in the future can be a daunting task. Nonetheless, this is exactly the topic that Ediphi Founder & CEO Cristina Carl tried to address when she took the stage during The Lively & Grit Daily House at SXSW 2024.

Carl sat with marketing speaker and consultant Swan Sit as part of the “Transformative Technologies in Education, Branding, and Social Impact” panel. If you couldn’t attend and want to know more about what they both had to say, make sure to watch the video below. To learn more about similar topics, make sure to watch our other panels on the Grit Daily YouTube channel.