Help Me Wolf Blitzer, You’re My Only Hope
Here at ?What If!, we love finding examples of “innovation for innovation’s sake.” These are useful to point out to illustrate that any innovation, if it is to have an impact, must be grounded in a need.
This point was driven home last night as I watched CNN’s coverage of the US election from my cozy couch in the middle of the very blue 85th voting district in NYC.
There were two technological innovations being flaunted by Mr. Blitzer and company, each of which exemplified the two ends of the innovation spectrum titled “Because we can” and “Because we need to.”
The first was the ludicrous “Hologram” technology (Blitzergram?) that allowed an anchor to be virtually standing in front of Wolf Blitzer as he delivered his coverage. I’ve never had a major problem to a split screen discussion, or even the clear glass LCD panel that lowers into Bill Maher’s studio to show a visitor via satellite. The hologram looked silly. And I mean Princess Leia from R2D2 silly. And the lack of need of this technology was evidenced by the fact that the entire discussion Wolf had with the presenter was about the technology, not the election!
Now contrast that with the interactive voter map that CNN featured to track the precincts’ results and CNN projections. This “iPhone” style map would zoom in and out to the county level, showed current data as well as historic, and could be tapped to outline outcome scenarios in real time. In a brilliant example of the power of Realness (one of our ?What If! creative behaviours), at about 9:30 EST, the analyst painted a picture of what it would take McCain to win from that point out. As he tapped states red, the electoral contribution added up on a bar graph. By the end, he had “given him” all the theoretical states that McCain could hope to win – and he came up short.
So while the official “call” was not made for 90 minutes, his chat in front of this brilliant map made it real for me in the moment (and left my relaxed enough to fall asleep on my couch, I might add).