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We’ve entered into a new year, the channels have been flooded with list upon list of 2010 predictions and trends, and now we’re laying the foundations for how we’d like to characterize the times – David Houle is calling it the Transformation Decade, a tweet from @RitaJKing mentioned The Imagination Age, and Seth Godin rang in the new year with a post titled “Welcome to the frustration decade (and the decade of change).”
Organizations are still scratching their heads about how to implement a social media strategy into their business plan and how to measure ROI, educators are wondering how to bring it into the classroom, marketers want to spam the hell out of it, and the layperson just wants to connect and share.
There are many levels of experimentation going on in the space, and there will be for years. But I wonder, is there a bigger picture here that might indicate what all this means? Most of us here, who seem to co-exist on and offline, feel pretty comfortable that we “get” social media. Or we think we do. But do we really understand what these tools represent, and what they enable? I’d like to share my view of what seems to be happening. I’m going to try to provide a context and make some connections. If it seems unrelated at first, just bear with me, I’m going to do my best to bring it all home in the end. 🙂
What is media?
Ok, before we talk about social media, just a quick overview of ‘media’ in general. By definition, media is the plural of medium. So that means it’s an intermediary, it exists between two things. We think of “the media” in terms of it being the delivery system between news and us, or the message and its audience.
But think about the world around us. About everything manmade. Isn’t it all a media in some way? You could say we live in a fully mediated environment, in that we as human beings have literally constructed our realities around us, with almost everything serving as a representation of something else.
Think about the way we’ve constructed our physical realities through buildings and cityscapes. Architecture may be a combination of form and function, but it’s also a representation of the cultural, political, and economic flavor of its time. It represents power, beauty, and often the ideal of perfection or divinity. (Many great structures seem to have been built in accordance with the golden ratio, or ‘divine proportion,’ a proportion found in nature and associated with aesthetics.) So as media, our built environment tells us stories about who we are, our ideals, and our values.
We see this in imagery as well, as we construct our social realities. From the iconic photographs we circulate to represent our memory of history,
to our ideas about popular culture,
to the products we buy and where we buy them and what that says about us,
to the propaganda that influences our political views and cultural ideals.
The point is that much of ‘reality’ is an illusion, insofar as it is the collection of symbols and stories that we are told and that we tell each other. We collectively agree upon them, and so they become real.
So what’s social media?
OK, so we did the crash course in media studies, now back to social media. Why is social media so interesting and incredibly powerful?
In the short history of communication technologies, information was usually limited to flowing from one to one (telephone) or from one to many (radio, television). Then the internet came around and became a read/write web (“web 2.0”), characterized by applications and services that have given us the ability to create and share information. It allows for many-to-many communication, connection on a global level, and signaled the beginnings of a networked culture.
Through blogs, wikis, social bookmarking, photo sharing, and social networks, we are creating windows into each other’s lives and minds. Communities are forming around ideas, hobbies, causes, and any kind of organizational affiliation imaginable.
Then we decided we wanted even faster access to information, faster access to news, faster access to public opinion, and faster access to each other. Enter Twitter. Wikipedia calls it a social networking and micro-blogging service, but I think of it more like an Information & Idea Exchange. There was a nice write up by David Carr about the service in the New York Times the other day, titled Why Twitter Will Endure, which will give you a nice overview of what it’s all about. You can also check out the experiment @ekolsky and I did the other week by searching the hashtag #MonTwit; we sent out a call for anyone interested to write a post on the same day about what they’d discovered about Twitter. We ended up with 20 some blog posts and another handful of responses in tweet form. Not a bad turnout for about 15 seconds of planning. For some practical business tips about how to use Twitter, check out this article in Forbes.
But essentially, Twitter is a communication platform that’s comprised of just about 100 million people located around the world. And unlike any other network, when you’re on Twitter, you’re in the same room with every other person on Twitter. It’s like a pulse of what people are collectively thinking about, and so in some ways, becoming a kind of global consciousness. We’re connecting with peers around the globe and exchanging tips for business practices. We’re connecting with educators and researchers and scientists and discovering new ways of teaching and learning. We’re being exposed to each other’s perspectives on the world, and our capacity for empathy is expanding.
Sure there’s misinformation, spam, and useless junk too. Just like anywhere. It just means our ability to scan information and critically evaluate its validity will grow to be an ever more important skill.
But there is something happening here that is truly unprecedented in human history. Never has there been a potential for all of us to be connected like this. And the implications are huge.
So what’s social media? It’s the opportunity to create shared vision.
All these platforms are just the tools, but look what they enable. In the way that mass media has shaped our perceptions about culture, politics, and society, now social media also has that ability. But the message isn’t traveling from them to us, top down, from the aristocrats to the plebes. It’s moving from us to us.
We are living in a time of tremendous change; global systems are collapsing (economic, political, environmental) and opportunities for better systems to emerge are being revealed. People are waking up and aching for a new way to understand what’s happening and to be participants in shaping the outcome.
If you’re using social media as part of a new vision for your organization (social business design, social CRM) or as an addition to your personal learning network (PLN) or to empower people or to build and spread ideas, you get it. We’re growing into a global human network, and we’re able to begin constructing our own reality. ‘The way things work’ isn’t set in stone, it’s a social agreement. So many aspects of the way we work, the way we live, and the way we relate to each other are products of the systems that are currently in place. When we start experimenting with new ideas put together in new ways by new groups of people (and failing often), eventually we’ll figure it out – it’s how innovation happens. At so many levels, as a species, we are at a pivotal time in history where we can collectively design a new future.
If every world-changing set of actions is set in motion by an idea, and this new form of communication allows us to plant the seeds for those ideas to blossom and take shape, then those folks at the beginning of this post are on to something – it truly could be a decade characterized by frustration, imagination, and transformative change.
emergent by design 
I think it’s useful, too, to think about the notion of “mediators” when we talk about media, social or not. Any expression of idea is automatically mediated by the mode with which we choose to express it. I call you to tell you about this idea I just got, or I tweet about it, or I post it as a comment on a blog post, or I write it down (in cursive or in print, or type it up and print it) and put it in an envelope and mail it to you. Then the communication tools, in turn, mediate the ideas we have, just as the telegraph led to a shift in writing style and the invention of the telephone led to a shift in how we think about social interactions. Latour talks about “mutually mediating mediators,” and this, too, might be a useful notion as we think about how social media acts upon and is acted upon by its users.
Hi Jenna!
Those are good points. I think a lot of people are already feeling those effects. I know I do. Being able to communicate and exchange information digitally has changed the way I think about social interactions, about interface, and about how ideas/messages are built. I’ve become much more aware of word choices and how to lay out a post, because every word and arrangement of those words is a symbol in itself and seems to point at something else. It’s interesting, it’s like weaving ideas and emotions into words and images. Have you read Ong? The platform is creating this secondary orality, where we become storytellers again.
How’s your work going with participatory culture?
You are way closer to the true vision that is emerging than the people you quote are, but you filtered out what they are correct about and used it to your advantage. Breathtaking. Well done Venessa!
thanks
Venessa,
Inspirational post. I particularly liked this sentence:
“We are at a pivotal time in history where we can collectively design a new future.”
I’m excited to see how the new tools being developed to allow richer communication will facilitate tangible change in the way we live our lives.
Your idea to use transparency and social networking to transform the real estate industry (your blog post about it: http://bit.ly/8dWQny) is a great example. Real estate is an industry badly in need of a shakeup.
I’m excited too. I think as we move closer to ubiquitous computing, where the internet doesn’t just travel with us via our smartphones, but is embedded in all electronic devices, our perceptions about information and communication will shift again. Like you’ve talked about with the idea of the global brain, when we have access to this human ‘oneness’, that always kind of exists in the background but can be tapped in to at any time, it’ll continue to change the way we think about ourselves and the perceived gap that exists between us and everyone else.
I think there’s another opportunity for transforming the way real estate estate is done.
As Richard Florida has indicated, mobility is growing as foreclosures and joblessness spread. Millions of people are entering the rental market rather than clinging to underwater mortgages.
In response, there’s an opportunity for online communities/tribes to enable subgroups to discuss what they’re looking for in the way of greener pastures.
Once they’d formed workable visions of their preferred location and agreed on key triggers for move, individuals could join in a threshold pledge (I will move to one of my tribe’s five shortlisted communities if ___other members also agree).
Assuming dozens or hundreds of renters/prospective homebuyers agreed to such pledges, they would have _huge_ leverage through buyers agents in terms of price negotiation.
The group would also have leverage with many hard-hit municipalities to speed local adoption of Gov 2.o and other transparency/accountability systems. (In my case, I would love for one of the gropu’s conditions to be application of Singapore’s “flexiwage system” to make public employees more user sensitive.)
In this way, tribes could co-create free institutions, awaken dormant capital in real estate values, and help speed the advent of a “Buildership Era” (more at http://www.buildership.org).
Best,
Mark Frazier
Openworld
@openworld @buildership @peerlearning
Mark,
An interesting idea. Today I was trying to figure out plausible metrics for social capital. it occurred to me that for place defined capital fair value of real estate might be one nice clear indicator. Of course it’s not the only one and “fair value” is different from selling or buying price. but..
As your comment suggests, the “quality of the neighborhood” increases real estate values. I think “quality of the neighborhood” could be a surrogate for some dimensions of social capital.
If this plays out one could plausibly make the argument that better schools lead to increases in social capital and thus increases in real estate prices.
Michael,
Almost agree. I’m rusty on land economics, but I recall that Hong Kong-style auctions of public land leases have proven exceptionally useful for governing institutions to capture the gains of providing high trust/high quality environments. So in auction settings at last, free market pricing captures the value of public goods.
Also, it would be interesting to take a look at the influence that major land grants have played in making educational institutions more attuned to the marketplace. Stanford’s land grant led them to create Stanford Research Park, the springboard for Silicon Valley. Same for Duke and Research Triangle. The more education stays agile and sensitive to changing markets, the higher the real estate values go. Hence the centrality of landgrants to the approaches we’ve been designing and testing at http://www.entrepreneurialschools.com and http://www.openworld.com. (And it may be interesting to see how land grants for pilot Gov 2.0 experiments could help fund and speed adoption of new policies and institutional practices in the public sector – see http://www.OpenworldInstitute.org for an intro to opportunities along this line.)
Best,
Mark
@openworld @peerlearning @buildership
Insightful. We do share a vision.
Venessa, just a small point, I would argue that the network society predates the Internet because there were information networks long before the Internet. Rather, the Internet is a product of the network society and makes the network society manifest for the masses.
A larger point is that social media also poses dangers. For instance, it could accelerate our current trajectory toward extinction rather than correct it. Here’s what I mean:
http://bit.ly/5cQ2Bo
This all being said, I agree with what I think is your main point, which is that social media does help people realize that reality is constructed and that they can also be in the game of constructing reality. I think this is on balance a positive development, though like everything not without it’s pitfalls. Part of design thinking is realizing that there are always trade offs. Gains in one dimension result in losses in others.
Neal
Neal,
Great post! It’s funny, I was gonna talk about panarchy in this one, but thought I’d save it for later. I totally agree with those points… ideas are just ideas until action is taken. Just because we retweet each other’s content, doesn’t guarantee it actually DOES anything. I think a lot of people are learning a lot, and experimenting/applying those things on small local levels, and that’s a start. One of the biggest examples I can think of so far of larger scale impact was the charity:water Twitter campaign last year that raised $250,000 in about a week. Do you know of others? And how do you suggest we start moving from talking to action? Oh, and on your first point, when has there been a global network society before?
Venessa (and Neal),
You hit the nail on the head – the proof of value for the kind of information-sharing social networking we engage in (as opposed to just chatting with friends) will be when something significant happens (beyond talk) as a result of the activity of many people working together, coordinated through social media.
In addition to your water example, the recent DARPA red balloon challenge showed the potential to quickly coordinate large numbers of people to accomplish a specific task.
I’m hopeful an even bigger and better example will happen soon in the form of a regime change in Iran, thanks in part to Twitter. Twitter has given citizens a means of telling their story to the world in real-time and in a way that engages public interest, at a time when traditional media channels have been locked out by the oppressive government.
–Dean
Venessa,
I was just talking about real world impact with Michel Bauwens of the P2P Foundation the other day. Below my signature is part of an e-mail I sent him which is an answer to your first question about impact.
Speaking of panarchy, Thomas Homer Dixon gave this great talk here:
http://fora.tv/2006/11/09/Leveraging_Catastrophe_for_Positive_Change
which puts all of this in context, at least for me. Basically he says we need new ways of governing ourselves if we’re to save our asses, and he points to mass collaboration technologies with the right architecture as the prime way of building a resilient society, one that harnesses the power of diversity and can respond quickly to challenges.
Of the origins of the network society, I’m no expert but taking Manuel Castell’s definition (something about the key activities of a society being organized around the transfer of electronic information through a network) makes me think the network society began to emerge earlier than the advent of the Internet in the 60s. Makes me think of telephone and telegraph networks which had been around for 100 years or so before the Internet. In fact, the early Internet was designed to ride on the old telephone network.
This being said, the definition of a network society is not solely technological. It’s about how society is organized, so the modern global economy, which predates the Internet by many decades and is a network, could also be seen as a manifestation of the network society.
In any case, pinpointing it’s origins is an academic exercise and subject to interpretation.
Neal
—
Kiva surpassed $100 million in no interest p2p loans in 2009. When I think about how people shape their realities together, I see a kind of hierarchy where peer production that works with symbols as input (software, culture, information, knowledge, etc.) gets addressed first because of low transaction costs. But then there’s money, which is also a symbol, though a very potent one and a sort of bridge between the symbolic and material world. I think it’s pretty significant when citizens start using money as input to social production. In a way, Kiva is a p2p solution to income inequality. People in a way are taxing themselves to get economic justice. This is also a radical widening of the circle of compassion outside of the family. Historically, no interest loans are for family, community members, or members of the same religion. People are loaning money at no interest to strangers. This is radical, but people in the US talk about Kiva as a cool social enterprise techno wonder, etc., but for me Kiva is a substantial functioning and embodied refutation of the state and the market. The Kiva community says, “we redistribute our own wealth without the help of the state, we see borrowers as peers and not as recipients of charity or “help”, and money is a tool for a better world, not just as a means to beget more money.”
Neal,
Kiva.org is a terrific example of people helping people, facilitated by the internet and social networking technology. It illustrates how geographic, cultural and political barriers to interaction can be overcome using technology.
–Dean
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As always a very nice post.
I hesitate to use the term “social media” and consequently try to avoid using the term as much as possible. In a sense, it is really about connections and they could be to ideas, themes, causes and also people . Consequently, the tools allow us to, as you rightly put, to create a shared vision. In a sense each individual has the potential to create and contribute to more than one area and consequently fulfill their potential.
The time now requires that the people who know and understand these tools and medium, guide and mentor those who would like to learn, contribute and share. It is actions that are thoughtful in this regard , that will encourage people to understand the bigger picture.
The larger question though still is, does online egalitarian behavior also translate to offline. The shared vision has to be seamless.
Would like your thoughts.
I know, I’m tired of the term ‘social media’ too… it’s just digital communication after all. Your question is the same one Neal posed above – does all this online talking matter if nothing comes of it in the real world? And how do we make something happen? There’s a very short-term commitment level to retweet something… it’s a little more when you coordinate a more in-depth skype chat or a google wave….more when you organize a meetup in your town and actually plan something… and more when you follow through and do something. What do you think? What are small things we can start doing to get the hang of real coordination, collaboration, and action?
Venessa,
Inspired by your question:
“What are small things we can start doing to get the hang of real coordination, collaboration, and action?”
I wrote a response title:
Moving Social Media from Talk to Positive Change – One Pothole at a Time
http://bit.ly/4U0fJm
It discusses some inspirational efforts to move beyond discussion to action by leveraging social media.
–Dean
I liked this post because it forced me to remember the ideas and potential behind the technology. Too often I get focused on helping people sell more stuff and lose sight of the beauty of the whole thing. Thanks for this sweeping assessment. Well done!
thanks Mark
We need titles, we need formalities and we need structures. At least that’s what we think we need and thus this is why “social media” the words itself and the notion of what it is will always be pampered to deliver it in a way that simply makes it something that most of us cannot grasp on a different level.
That different level is leadership among ourselves. and delivering our best self. We can’t train people to be themselves but we can train people to use these platforms, to deliver themselves.
When each person understands that their social responsibility is to deliver what they know and to do so for a great good. That’s the easy part, the hard part is connecting the dots and allowing creativity and innovation to create growth… that’s the hard part.
because most aren’t ready to make it a habit of change into a new decade. that is why seth godin calls it frustration period because most are not getting it in the way it should be gotten.
the way we did business, the push and pull, the give and take, the buy and sell, are flowing at faster rates that it’s inevitable that we can take old “memes” into this new era.
i think @unmarketing says it best.. that the new social media is about unmarketing yourself and start engaging… offer your knowledge, gain on it with combining others knowledge, keep trying things and cater it to what your deliverin gin service and product….
but all that is useless if the mindset doesn’t follow. in the next ten years, i like to call it raising human consciousness.
Happy New Year.
thank you Spiro,
you’re right. it all has to start with the mindset, and then the creativity, innovation, and action will follow from there. and it is frustrating that it’s not being seen for what it is/could be – how do we share that message? people don’t wanna hear about ‘paradigm shifts’ – it sounds too expansive and people just tune out. maybe it’s just baby steps, and giving lots of examples to connect the dots… it can’t be forced, it can only be presented. then it’s a person’s choice what they want to do with that information – let it disrupt their worldview to make room for a new perspective, or blow it off as new age wishful thinking.
this blog has been an inspiration for me, just seeing all these people coming together around ideas and sharing and discussing. i like to think of it as raising human consciousness too – it’s what i was thinking when i chose the title. coming into a new collective consciousness is an emergence, and we can shape the future by design, as participants, not just spectators.
at least that’s the theory. i’m glad we are building momentum here, but i am antsy to see how we can start experimenting in the real world. i get quickly overwhelmed when i think about all the things that should be changed.
what are small steps we can start taking to help build confidence in ourselves and get proof that excited banter online can translate to actual positive change?
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Venessa, for me as constructivist (Watzlawick was a compatriot)”reality” is always a result of media, something constructed. Reality is always connected to an individual. There is no generally applicable reality that is valid for all of us. Google has formed our “Googlism Reality” and Twitter will form (with your help) a different kind of reality. Maybe (hopefully) a better one, a reality that is formed by “algorithmic authority” (see Clay Shirky’s posting http://bit.ly/8EdDl3). I appreciate your postings, every single one!
Venessa,
I’m also tired of the term social media. But it’s more than tired, I think it’s a destructive label because in the business media sense of the phrase, it means a way that the we entertain and endlessly distract each other to the benefit of the private companies that host our “conversations.” In this way, it can be just as bad as TV, the only difference being that instead of the distraction originating from a hierarchy, we peer produce our own disempowerment…and (drum roll) other people get rich on that. Now that’s progress. Yippee for social media! (sarcasm)
Here’s my proposal. Let’s carve out the purposeful piece of the social media landscape and call it civic media. Civic media, meaning peer to peer communication with the purpose of serving the common good. At a minimum, nonprofits should use another term than social media.
Or maybe there’s another name? Any ideas?
Neal
Neal, I really dig the umbrella term ‘civic media’. Am working on a regional social media project for local communities – civic media captures the essence of what we’re trying to do and how we plan to differentiate. Would love to read a post on the subject/term.
2010 – 2015 The half-decade (10 year decades are simply to long in the acceleration era) that saw social media platforms enabled the rise of Civic Media.
It gets at the heart of what media actually is and the human desire to “create shared vision” that Venessa addresses. It’s also more brandable than ‘constructivist media’, tho I like that rterm as well.
I think this is the direction my friend and colleague, Doug Schuler of Evergreen College is trying to thresh out with his concept of civic intelligence (or sometimes he has used the term, “civic imagination” — which I have baldly stolen for one of my Twitter lists).
Some of his thinking (and that of many others involved in the Liberating Voices project) can be seen here:
http://tinyurl.com/civic-intelligence
and here:
http://tinyurl.com/Liberating-Voices
thanks for these resources Ken
you familiar with the P2P Foundation? (http://p2pfoundation.net/The_Foundation_for_P2P_Alternatives)
i wonder if they’ve come up with a twitter-like platform that’s open. when twitter figures out a model for monetizing and the channels become even spammier, people are going to start looking to migrate…..
I think the way for Twitter to keep on top will be to go beyond ordinary retweeting (RT) to ReTweet to Act (RTa ).
People, in their profiles, should link to PledgeBank-style “standing offers” (e.g. via tribes or blogs of their choosing) of contingent willingness to act.
These acts can take the form of pledged willingness to join in giving/purchasing/volunteering on a group basis – once a threshold number of people in their networks have also agreed.
Twitter’s social networks can provide an overlay for the best offers (via RTa) to rapidly spread, be discussed (DebateGraph?), and be decided on.
I think that will be the breakthrough for Twitter to monetize – the ability of social networks to coordinate their behavior changes in ways that can radically change the fortunes of incumbent vendors and organizations.
Best,
Mark Frazier
@openworld @buildership @peerlearning
Alvis,
Your project sounds cool! Would love to know about it when the time is right.
Another possible replacement term for social media is peer media, though civic or citizen media does more powerfully connote the idea of a shared vision (nice point, BTW).
Neal
ps. is Iveta’s you sister? I volunteered at Accelerating Change 2004 and met Iveta, John, and some other crazy cool folks.
LOL, we’re all connected after all. Iveta is Alvis’s sister, and Alvis is my husband’s best friend (and also my former ’employer’ on the MemeBox project). and John is a close friend too – always pushing me to broader systems thinking!
Neal. Yes indeed! As Venessa wrote, Iveta is my sister and we’re all somewhat offshoots of the acceleration studies crew. I too was at AC 2004, which rocked, and I’m sure I bumped into you at some of the volunteer meetings.
Am in Mtn View now – we should hang out sometime!
Alvis, Vanessa, what a nice surprise. Glad I dropped in!
I live in Mountain View now too. Would be great to hang out. I’m one block from the Caltrain station. Drop a line, neal at shareable dot net.
Oh, so at least one of you probably knows David Hodgson. He and I have been talking about co-working one day here and have a mind meld or something like that. Maybe we should coordinate.
Yeah, AC 2004 did rock. One of the best conferences ever. And I’ll never forget trying to sell Larry Page an AC t-shirt at the registration table. I come face to face with one of the most important people in tech, and all I have to say is “do you want to buy a t-shirt.” Hilarious.
Neal
yes, i have definitely met @davidhodgson/@ideahive [on Twitter, at least]! you guys are so lucky to all be out on the west coast!
Excellent post, Venessa – quite thought-provoking! Some true gems of ideas here (as I of course tweeted incessantly about…). Regarding your ideas on social media as an “opportunity to create shared vision” and a platform to “collectively design a new future”, my only comment is that we have to consider the real-time nature of social media. While this is a very powerful aspect, it can also detract from its power and thus ability for creating that shared vision. Something as simple as a conversation on Twitter for instance is quite transient – it is gone from your personal timeline within a matter of minutes, gone from your @mentions in a matter of hours, and gone from search in a matter of days. How do we harness what we’ve collectively discussed, debated, learned, decided, accomplished? “Innovation that matters” is a phrase my company often uses – and in this case I’m wondering how these innovative ideas come to fruition if they are born (and potentially die) in real-time? I think these issues can be solved, but I believe the current state of social media makes it a key challenge.
“How do we harness what we’ve collectively discussed, debated, learned, decided, accomplished?”
that’s what i want to know too. i don’t know the answer. i wonder if some kind of kiva.org-esque model could work…. if you could get enough people around an idea so that no one person had to handle the financial aspects of funding a project, so everyone invests just a little and is therefore a stakeholder, then maybe more lightweight startup experiments could start happening…. and if/when they fail, the loss hasn’t been so great that people are apprehensive to try again. like, what if you could rally 2 million people to donate .50 cents to an idea? no big loss if it fails… hell, you can’t even get a jr bacon cheeseburger for .50. the risk is so low. of course then it becomes a matter of the mgmt of the execution of the thing, and who’s doing it, and if it’s acceptable to the investors….. i don’t know, what do you think?
Venessa, an excellent post and enjoyed reading. Talking about online chat vs real impact, to me it is all part of the paradigm shift. Used to be in the old days aristocrats had their little clique, intellectuals had their little clubs, the farmers had their little unions etc. In the social network world, those boundaries are not visible as it is open to everyone and anyone — but deep down there are still numerous psychographic groups in play. And some of them are just really for entertainment and chat, some are there for ideation, some are there for intellectual curiosity, some to work out their entrepreneurial kinks etc. And because the numbers in these groups are skewed, it appears sometimes that there is a lot more noise than signal. But having observed certain groups, I (personal opinion) feel there is a lot that is happening from a real impact point of view.
You are absolutely on the spot regarding the transformative changes. To me one aspect that really stands out now (in contrast to the previous media) is the amazing reach and visibility an idea, comment, or thought can have and the responses it can generate. Even things like ‘Drew Carey giving $1million’ is really unimaginable in the pre-social media world.
Thanks for a great read.
Thanks Ned,
This blog is a small example of the ‘amazing visibility of an idea & responses it can generate’! I only really started writing regularly in November, and just 2 months later, I feel there is a community growing around these ideas. I love how the posts are like primers, and then people jump into comments/discussions below. I think @openworld’s comment above about RTa (Retweet to Act) and the other ideas about ‘pledged willingness’ is pretty interesting… I wonder how something like that might get off the ground.
Dear Venessa,
I have been impressed with your work since I became aware of it (and thanks to that goes to Twitter!). Development of media, even social media in particular, is such a rapid process that there are no many people like you, capable of grasping the essence of observed processes.
I was additionally tackled with a notion of fully mediated environment. In case that you are interested in partially different approach to mediated environment and its use in social activities, let me point you to the following article: http://indecs.eu/index.php?s=x&y=2003&p=41-53 (any comment about that is appreciated),
Josip
Hi Josip –
When I clicked the link to view the full PDF version of your article I received a 404 file not found error message. Please let me know if the link gets fixed, I’d be curious to read it.
I’m Croatian too, btw. My mom was from Karlovac & tata from Sisak. I’m hoping to go visit this summer, I haven’t been there since I was a teenager. I want to show my husband our beautiful coast!
Venessa,
here’s correct link: http://indecs.eu/2003/indecs2003-pp41-53.pdf
Incredibly! I managed to incorporate an error within the link copied 🙂
Let me now send you an email, as the rest of your reply induces considerably longer comment 🙂
Josip
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Venessa,
Very succinct notions, if it is possible to be re: such a subject. Loved the discussion, and the conversations that followed. Thanks everyone!
I think social or civic media, affords empowerment to ANYBODY who cares to use it. It makes it possible for ANYONE to have a voice. It caters to the basic human need to belong, be a part of something bigger, to be be valued. You feel great by doing good. Of course, how you engage in conversations will then dictate your probability of being a part of the shared vision, or where you stand on the “influence” scale.
@Eric: You raise a very topical issue. Difficulty in gleaning valid, and actionable insights from the mariana trenches of Twitter, with ROIs attached, is one of the bottlenecks that is preventing a wider use of social media. Advances in analytics will help, but what is important to remember is this – it takes TIME for the virtual swell to transform into a “action” tsunami….to borrow from @openworld.
From,
An Honest Perspective
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Hello
Some really interesting comments on this trail – some of the more intelligent and intelligible I have come across in my dips into various blogs on Social Media.
As a Corporate trying to get to grips with the Social Media conundrum I have the recurring question in my mind of whether Social Media is being over complicated?
In my simple mind it is the next step in terms of communication tools or mediums for communicating, evolving along from (and with) the comms trail of WOM, paper & quill, books, typewriter, radio, telephone, television, home computer, email, internet, videoconferencing (plus others too numerous to list here)etc. So some of these you could call ‘social media’ such as; WOM,and all have a commonality of being able to carry communications.
We are fortunate to be in an age where not just 2-way communication can be enabled through a 3rd party device but a multiple way communication can take place. And teh marvel doesn’t stop there we are talking about it happening in realtime.
So my point is that SM is the natural progression for communicating. I can’t remember how many times I have used email wishing it were more dynamic and less constraining. And lo and behold the marvels of Social Media evolves and lands in our digital world, opening up a new level of interaction.(So whatever we wish to call it is semantics in my mind, providing we are clear as to what we mean by the terminology employed.)
My challenge is how to best embrace and leverage this new opportunity for communication as a Corporate entity, as I would consider the best ways for all other comms channels. A new channel raises the question of how to best manage the opportunity. The perennial issue of resource is front of mind, required to ensure constant yet relevant engagement with potential/customers (hence so much focus on ROI type conversations when SM is mentioned as a business case for resource has to be built). Also I want to find relevant people and groups and communities to engage with – and, in my opinion, that is more difficult to do effectively (and will become more so as the popularity grows) unless there is access to a quality / relevance indicator. How far will the search engines or SM measurement tools be able to assist with this? Otherwise I have to cast my net wide to ensure i catch sufficient fish of the type I am interested in acquiring. I agree with @eric’s comments and views on this subject and the transient nature of the interaction.
The future of SM? In my opinion it will evolve and grow in reach, no doubt, yet continue to splinter and have potential to grow unwieldy. The issue will be how to manage the amount of information and how to find sufficient relevance amongst all the noise, whether a corporate or individual user.
Therefore I was fortunate to ‘stumble’ into this blog….
hi nicolina,
a recently formed community that’s trying to answer the question of how corporations can utilize SM is unstructure.org. also google terms like “social business” “enterprise 2.0” “social CRM” “social enterprise”. Harvard Business Review (http://blogs.hbr.org/) has a lot of articles addressing it as well.
i don’t know if the question of SM is overly complicated, as you say, but it is certainly complex. we’re talking about many-2-many human communication dynamics, and everyone is still learning. you say your challenge is “how to best embrace and leverage”… i don’t think there is a “best” way. i think we’ll establish frameworks, but like in life, each communication exchange is contextual, so it can’t be a determined script. i think there’s going to be a lot more “being human”….. using intuition, judgment, *thinking*……
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Hi! You have quite an insightful post here. It tries to make sense of our media-driven world in an integrative big picture way.
This blog of yours resonates with me so much. Amazing how we share so many interests in common (internet, technology and design thinking among many others) even as I live halfway around the world (I’m a university student in the Philippines).
And the fact that I’m commenting here on your post when we’ve never met each other (and probably never will) is yet another testament to the power of the web. Looking forward to your future posts! I just discovered your blog today and I already bookmarked it. 🙂 Great job!
thanks for stopping by, scott!
Venessa,
funny enough I am researching this subject as well and pretty much from the same viewpoints. Hence I did not learn anything new, that is not to say you wrote common sense stuff.
Curiously we both arrived at the same expression “global consciousness” (if you read it somewhere else I would be appreciated if you could provide me with the source) and in that respect it was very interesting to read your post while sharing the same views.
As a M.Arch student I am currently trying to convert to our constructed reality and social structures the dynamics found in social media platforms as the theme for my Thesis.
So I belive this to be one way to ACT upon the new paradigms found through this new medium.
I would also like to leave you with the thought that social media is in fact the media without media as the human intermediaries that have selected and censored information throughout human history have seemingly been erased from the process (although most new network laws trying to be passed are trying to change that).
As a side note I spent last year in Slovenjia (under a student exchange program specializing in Urbanism) and was happy to visit Zagreb and Pula as well. 😉
hi nuno-
you can find some interesting material on ‘global consciousness’ by looking up collective intelligence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_intelligence and reading some of the people on that list, like Pierre Levy, Francis Heylighen, Kevin Kelly. you could also check the wikipedia pages on “global brain” and “noosphere” for more insight.
re: your thesis. what do you mean? it’s vague….. do you mean you’re exploring how to facilitate social change via social media?
i’m going to disagree with your statement that social media is the media without media. that’s not possible. it’s a completely mediated environment, and the degree to which our communications can take place is limited by the structure of the platforms. also, the idea of censored information having been erased…… i think it’s just wearing a different mask. the information is there, but most people don’t have the [mental] tools with with to effectively filter and vet it, and then to decide which of it matters. i think people are being fooled and placated – as if just because now you have ACCESS to information, it somehow means you’re excused from the necessity to THINK about what it means.
i find this interesting on so many levels, and can draw a parallel to our commoditized culture. (can you tell i’ve been reading adorno and benjamin?) there was a time when things had value because they were inaccessible to everyone…. (art, education, etc)….. now everything is mass produced, everyone has access to some kind of “version” of everything, but it’s not good enough anymore. they want the next thing. well there is no next thing. when anyone can have anything, all that’s left is the capacity for understanding…. which takes a degree of mental work…… and too many people are just mentally checking out…… i think social media is great, but it also is being used as an excuse to be lazy and sloppy with thinking, and to me that is a big risk that needs to be taken more seriously.
p.s. i love pula!
Venessa,
firstly let me thank you for the sources, I am just beginning so my literature review has still a long way to go. 🙂
In regard to my thesis, although it has a very sociological basis it is more concerned how to plan the physical space to allow for the interactions that exist in the web. A new Urbanism if you like based on social networks.
As the mediated/non-mediated discussion, the fact that later in your point you refer that ALL the info is there and that most of us cannot or will not filter it, is, in my opinion, an indicator that indeed there is no selection or mediation on the level of info uploading. Of course there is selection in availability and easiness of acquisition, but that is more a result of backward traditions than the system.
The fact that two nobodies in opposite parts of the globe can exchange anti-system out-of-the-box ideas is what I refer as unmediated interaction.
The platforms certainly limit interaction but not on a content-type kind of way, more of form, that is to say not the WHAT but the HOW and the TO WHOM.
I agree however with your disagreement with the word “erased” censorship is still certainly here, but at the same time they struggle much more since they have become unnecessary while the transactions can still occur in a viable fashion in their absence.
The lazyness and resignation of the masses is more of a cultural stigma than a result of the tools to me. We can clearly see that atrophy wearing off and more and more of an active role by the users.
Basically we have the tech, now we need the education.
ps: loved the pula coliseum!
i would recommend you check out some of the work of Shannon Mattern, one of our faculty members at the New School. Her specific study is Urban Space/Architecture & Media, and it was the focus of her doctoral work. Here’s a link to her personal site: http://www.wordsinspace.net/; you can read her personal publications, and under ‘links’ is a wealth of information that will keep you busy for months. good luck!
Much appreciated! 😀
ps: my name’s permalink directs you to my twitter account if you have interest to check it.
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