Two 'recognised' experts on Social Media (not victims to the big question of who is an expert and can you call yourself an expert), Euan Semple and Alan Moore, are running a session today on Social Media.
There is a part of me that hopes I learn nothing from the day, which means I know everything. Of course, I'm still hoping I learn something as otherwise I'll have wasted my whole day... but it's also comforting to have one's own theories and opinions confirmed by these two.
Alan Moore has mentioned the issues I've been thinking about for a while as to identity, and comparing the way we lived two centuries ago to the way we lived now. Social Media opens our horizons and breaks down our boundaries, but paradoxically it also brings us closer together. Our private lives and public lives can no longer be completely separated... OK... this is my interpretation...I'll talk about it more at another time.
Euan Semple: "There are no conscripts, there are only volunteers."
Now this is one of my problems. We need people to volunteer, but not everyone volunteers. So how can you engage those who neither volunteer nor would know that they are able to because they don't realise the option is there?
Alan Moore: "Culture made by the folk and we make it every day of our lives."
But if we're all creators, who has time to be spectators? Do the creators need spectators... or are we going to end up with a system where it's no longer the multi-logue i.e. the many talking to the many, because it will be (what, a 'new paradigm'?) of everyone talking to no one?
AM: "We've made the public domain highly efficient, but not highly effective." i.e., CCTV doesn't encourage trust.... we need to somehow engage with people and make them more trustworthy, rather than relying on frightening them into compliance.
AM: We need to be:
Networked
Lightweight
Flexible
Adaptive
Alan is now talking about 'Creative Commons' but I'm certain most people in the room don't know what it is... but he's going beyond social media and into fundamental problems with society and how it, and organisations, need to change to truly embrace the possibilities of the new networked society. No arguments there... but how? If we could change society there are so many forces for good that we should strive for... so will it really only be a generational thing? Will we need to wait for the young 'uns to grow up - as they know it all and embrace it 100%? But, what will their young, new generation then think about it? If you have exponential growth in technology and future abilities, by the time the Generation Y or even Millenials have grown up, who knows what will be possible? Social Media will be like a nineteenth century local newspaper compared to what the future technology could provide.
AM: "There is no offline and online, only blended reality."
Hyper-local v Super-global: a nice use of terms...
Technologies of Cooperation - Rheingold... certainly a better term than Social Media or Web 2.0... but it's all the same thing I guess.
AM: "Information is only valuable when it's flowing".
But is that true? I need to read more about this but it occurs to me that there are plenty of examples of information only having value when it is controlled... or often (in the case of trade secrets, intellectual property etc.) completely hidden from the world at large. I don't necessarily agree with that world, but surely a lot of business, and the economy in general, is based on the control of information... the restriction of that knowledge.
End of Alan's session, more to come....
No comments:
Post a Comment