Auto-Tune, Internet memes, and future trend analysis

It’s Thanksgiving week here in the United States, and I am very grateful to have found a video clip that features three of my favorite things:

1. Music technology
2. Weird Al Yankovic
3. Analytical tools to understand trends

You’ll admit, the Venn Diagram of such varying interests have a tiny intersection, so personally I’m going to enjoy it.

Here’s why the story of Auto-Tune is of interest to intelligence and decision making types. There’s nothing particularly universal about the software itself – it’s a “plugin” used for digital music production for the correction of vocals. If you sing out of tune, Auto-Tune drags you back into A440 pitch, using effects that range from imperceptible to robotic. As of 2009, the term “Auto-Tune” is a verb, and adjective and an Internet meme, for the reasons given in the video below. Unbeknown to the masses who know the effect through artists like T-Pain and The Gregory Brothers, the effect has been in use since 1997. Only now has it come to the cultural forefront. Why?

• Evolution of Auto-Tune from hardware to a software plugin usable with digital audio workstations
• Drop in price of Auto-Tune
• Increase in processing power and bandwidth of computing and the Internet in general
• Proliferation of free social media sites such as YouTube and MySpace

In short, the technology got cheaper, easier to use, and easier to distribute. This has led to the proliferation of an “Internet meme,” an idea that virally spawns a burst of creativity around the world on the same theme. What I love about this video from Rocketboom is their description of the four stages of an Internet meme, offering us a certain level of predictability for future memes. The stages are:

1. Introduction
2. Overexposure
3. Parody and remix
4. Equilibrium

You may not connect Lolcatz or dramatic chipmunk with economic forecasting or product management, but at Competitive Futures, we see significant similarities. Short-term fads and memes regularly invade the public consciousness, and as a decision maker you must understand their dynamics. Is green business a meme created by the media, or is it driven by structural factors? What about “ethical business,” is that just a popular reaction to the scandal in the financial world, or a development in the world of management? Is “collaboration” a marketing meme to describe the same old information technologies, or is it truly a driver of business value in the next decade?  We recommend that you collect a variety of data-driven trends to help your analysis – preferably trends that are under-reported and thus immune to the dynamics of Internet- or media-driven memes.

While you consider such heady stuff on the way into a long weekend, think it over with the Gregory Brothers, the world’s most awesome political-remix-Auto-Tuners: