Seth Godin wrote recently about Culture being invented by people who do not want to mess with new technology.

First he defines culture in terms of the opera, the novel and the newspaper – which is a debatable point in itself; but his main thesis is that the people in the ‘culture’ business would rather have technology stay still so that they can keep perfecting the culture.

I would argue that the top performers in any business (including the culture business) are actually early adopters of new technology – if only to stay ahead of the competition.

In fact there is a strong and perhaps unconscious feedback cycle set up between the early adopters and the innovators. This helps with the fine tuning and mass adoption of technology.  The advances in technology has bettered the human condition since the beginning of time – and allowed space for ‘culture’ to experiment and flourish.

With apologies to the chicken and the egg, technology does come first and culture follows.