The end of digitalization: three things that have happened and a few that haven’t in the last 15 years

At Good Rebels, we’ve been writing about marketing, creativity, and digitalization for 20 years. Personally, I’ve been contributing to these pages for 15 of those years. Over that time, I’ve read a lot, taught classes, given talks, and spoken with people who know far more than I do, always eager to listen. I’ve also written a great deal, because writing is an incredible way to learn.

Today, in this space you’re holding, I’d like to take a step back and reflect on how digitalization has quietly transformed the way we live and relate to one another. Beyond personal anecdotes or subjective impressions of change, if we look at the data today, this process has become a deeply integrated part of daily life. According to DataReportal Spain will have 56.1 million mobile connections in 2025, 117% of the population, with 98.3% of them using 3G, 4G, or 5G networks.

Before we dive in, I want to introduce a concept coined by T.S. Eliot: temporal provincialism. It captures a phenomenon many of us experience: we overestimate the historical significance of events happening in our lifetime. We think we’re living through unique, unrepeatable moments and that no one before us experienced anything similarly impactful. I believe this applies to digitalization.

What was the digital world like in 2010?

In 2010, I walked through the doors of what was then our office on Alberto Aguilera, a magical place called Territorio Creativo, which would become Good Rebels. I received a MacBook and a sticky note from Maricruz Polo that read “Welcome”, a small gesture I still treasure, and I looked out the window. Here’s some of what I saw:

• Digital ad spend represented 11% of the total, compared to 73% today.
• Amazon didn’t operate in Spain.
• Sam Altman, now CEO of OpenAI, was about to sell his startup Loopt.
• Facebook wasn’t publicly traded and had just launched the Newsfeed.
• Instagram had one million users worldwide, 14 of whom worked at Territorio Creativo.
• Rosalía earned €80 for singing at weddings.
• Average daily mobile use was 22 minutes, compared to today’s 6 hours and 40 minutes of screen time.
• Internet Explorer held 57% market share.
• Satya Nadella, now Microsoft CEO, was working on database integrations.
• Netflix still rented DVDs.
• WhatsApp barely reached 1% of the Spanish population.
• Satoru Iwata was alive, and Nintendo’s stock was near historic lows.

It was a different world, yet the seeds of what we experience today were already planted.

The end of digitalization? From technological evolution to cultural framework.

Ignoring Eliot for a moment, I’d argue we’re at a particularly interesting moment: digitalization has ended. We live connected. In fact, we live quantified lives. This global connectivity means that routines like the 24-hour quantified life I describe aren’t isolated anomalies, they’re part of a broader trend: constant tracking, analysis of every moment, and correlation of personal data with habits, health, and emotions. 

Even when we’re offline, we remain connected. Hyperconnectivity, barely imaginable years ago, is now undeniable. At the 2025 Mobile World Congress, Cisco showed how the proliferation of connected devices, driven by Wi-Fi 6 GHz and AI, now requires managing tens of thousands of simultaneous connections. In fact, 30% of devices at large events already use the new 6 GHz band, a clear signal of the accelerated pace and growing demands of this connected era.

Another projection I repeated countless times, which, looking back, was inaccurate, but that doesn’t matter. By 2025, there are over 35 billion connected devices worldwide, around 30.9 billion of which are IoT devices, approaching 40 billion, more than three per person. And while 5.5 billion people use the Internet, mostly via mobile, feeding this constant tide of stimuli, a clear response emerges: Gen Z is deliberately disconnecting. For many, digital detox improves focus, reduces anxiety, and imposes limits on the 24/7 culture.

@galatayaii

fulfilling my 2025 resolution #digitaldetox #doomscrolling #health

♬ Sleepgarden – Alan Gogoll

In Spain, we experienced a significant blackout in 2025, a day that reminded us of a different life. Simpler? Better? Perhaps. Young people idealize pre-internet life, just as many Millennials romanticized the 60s or 70s. But the next day, most returned to their habitual screen time.

Today, we’ve internalized that digitalization has changed our lives permanently, for better and worse,  and we don’t want to go back. Any attempt by governments to control access to information is generally challenged publicly. Beyond opinions on screen time, we understand at our core that screens are now part of us, and there’s no turning back.

Digitalization has ended because content is now a commodity. 

In 2010, Twitter was a network for entrepreneurs and freelancers; celebrities and journalists arrived later. Though I didn’t use it much, I remember observing it and discussing the tilt of Twitter. In other words, over time, every social network comes to reflect the demographics of the society it serves.

Today, everything is TV in many ways — a concept we’ve long discussed and applied with clients. It’s neither good nor bad, it just is: any format. Social media, podcasts, AI platforms — all are converging. Most Instagram and Facebook time is no longer “social” but watching videos from strangers; podcasts are morphing into YouTube shows; even AI generates endless streams of clips. Everything becomes an endlessly flowing screen. And in that flow, what we consume is television in its broadest sense: a continuous movement of images that envelops everything.

Content has become a commodity. I once wrote about liquid content, the separation of medium and message that digitalization allowed, anticipating the diminishing importance of websites, content dispersion, and measurement complexity. Digitalization turned content into an adaptable feed: consumable on paper, mobile, tablet, console, or WebTV. Its value no longer depended on medium but on ease of access and distribution channel. That prediction has become a reality. A recent example is Microsoft’s strategy “Is this an Xbox?”, demonstrating how content now flows freely across platforms to capture attention in a saturated ecosystem.

What I didn’t foresee was how generative AI would dramatically reduce production costs and fully commoditize much of content. People no longer pay €3 to rent a movie, nor for cookbooks or maps. Everything is accessible to all, representing a true democratization of information and entertainment. In this context, since all stories have been told, what matters isn’t what you produce, but how you produce it.

Continuing with the theme of content democratization, this applies not only to consumption but also to creation. We’ve built the creator economy: there’s space for Substacks, Patreons, and similar projects. The fact that a significant number of people can make a living from creating content exists because of a vast — and ever-growing — pool of free content generating the “noise.” It serves 80% of the audience most of the time. Without this “noise,” the creator economy simply wouldn’t exist.

Yet, value is increasingly concentrated in those who manage to forge a direct connection with their audience. According to 2025 Content Creator Economy: 71 Statistics & Key Insights, half of the $290 billion in the creative ecosystem now comes from direct-to-fan revenue: tickets, streams, memberships.

Digitalization has ended because platforms have won.

Fourteen years ago, we reflected on the impending contest between technological infrastructure, digital platforms, and content — without knowing who would prevail. By 2017, it seemed digital platforms were gaining the upper hand, and today it’s indisputable that they have. 

Their strategy is clear and effective: they aggregate supply, products and content,  and demand, users, advertisers, and sellers,  paying very little for circulating content while retaining a substantial share of the generated value. What really matters to users is the combination of access, platform, and content, delivered simply and attractively. This integration, evident in giants like Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, and Microsoft, makes them almost unbeatable in a hyper-connected digital ecosystem, where value is created both in the infrastructure and in the ability to attract and organise creators and consumers.

The role of platforms in our lives, and the algorithms that select content in an infinite information landscape, shapes everything from how we consume to how we form opinions. I found this post by Seth Godin particularly interesting, which I came across just a few days ago.

It focuses on platforms’ apparent inability to have their algorithms truly serve users’ interests. This debate recalls the 1960s and 70s, when consumers watched classical theatre on TV simply because “that’s what was on.” That was the monopoly of information and entertainment. Platforms have won, yet they continue to compete among themselves.

If there was any doubt left, IAB 2025 makes it crystal clear: investment now lives on platforms. This isn’t a trend; it’s the new cultural map of marketing. Users won’t do the work of curating content or making purchasing decisions. The most human thing is the brain’s need to conserve energy. In a world of symmetric information and infinite content, this work became unnecessary. The margin of error for buying something useless or watching something unenjoyable has become minimal compared to the effort required to decide. That’s why markets have not become conversations.

Digitalization has ended because AI is no longer digitalization. 

For the first time in a decade, technological infrastructure (TSMC, Nvidia, versus platforms) is again seen as a key factor:  record capitalizations underline its importance for what’s to come.

As always, I have no certainties. Over the years, I also predicted that Facebook had overpaid for Instagram and that users wouldn’t adopt apps. Nevertheless, I believe the current and future impact of AI, whether generative or agent-based,  is largely about making processes more efficient, not merely adopting them. In my view, this has been the essence of digitalization in the early 21st century. Perhaps in 15 years, I’ll revisit this post, connect the dots, and conclude that real digitalization actually started now.

The post-digital era: What remains when everything is already digital.

After 15 years writing about digitalization, I take away one reflection: we are at the beginning of something that no longer needs qualifiers. Digitalization has ceased to be a process and has become a cultural framework that permeates everything: how we consume, how we make decisions, how we trust.

Content is a commodity, platforms have won, and constant connectivity is no longer a novelty but a condition of existence. That’s why we speak of the “end” of digitalization: not because it’s over, but because it has ceased to be a battleground and has become the playing field.

What comes next AI, the resurgence of infrastructure, the reorganising creator economy is no longer about learning to use tools, but about understanding new cultural logics and new systems of value. And personally, after a decade and a half writing here, I remain fascinated by how everything continues to change while we try to make sense of it. Perhaps in another 15 years, I’ll return to this post and conclude that real digitalization began precisely now. But that is the challenge, and the opportunity, of working in marketing: reading the present while building the future.