The difference between pre-Internet and post-Internet communication ideas is architecture.

Before the Internet, we would create inside decades-old protocols (CMYK color space for print, NTSC for television). These systems were so old, so engrained, we typically didn’t have to consider them. The architecture of our ideas was, for all practical purposes, invisible. After all, to suggest buying :32 second blocks of network broadcast time defeats the purpose of efficiencies in the marketplace.

Today, post-Internet, we often must create the idea and its architecture. How big is a website? How does its content relate and connect? What’s our game logic for the brand game app? How might a rich media experience integrate with social networks? These are questions beyond design and copy.

These are questions of architecture—these might be ideas—that must be defined in tandem with the core communication idea itself. Best practices might guide us, but do not restrict us in the way pre-Internet architectures do. Post-Internet architectures are also evolving at a rapid pace, which adds a layer of drama.

So it is most often not enough to simply have a communication idea in the post-Internet age. You must also supply ideas for  structure, the frame, in which a communication idea will live.

This is the exact spot where I see the greatest disconnect with established advertising thinking. It is truly hard enough to come up with an idea, any idea; never mind a communications idea for the ages. To add the responsibility of architecture often brings the creative process to a halt. We so often stop at copywriting and design.

Alas, roles like creative technologist and the field of user experience are short term solutions. If technology and experience remain disconnected from the core communication process—arriving after the idea is developed, serving merely to justify—then we have not taken full advantage of post-Internet opportunity.

The copywriters, art directors and designers of today and tomorrow must make architecture and technology inherent skills, infusing these disciplines into everyday practice. Account directors, planners and producers ought to be thinking this way, too—writing briefs that acknowledge architecture and technology, building process that requests and incorporates a richer set of deliverables. Clients ought to be asking their strategic and creative leaders to stop deferring to subject-matter experts, and encourage the full integration of communication and idea-architecture.

This world exists. We have only to choose to live in it.