In Defense of Social Media (At Least Some Of It) - O'Reilly R...

By analogy, the railroad did not invent the wheel nor did it invent locomotion or steam power. In fact the train did not create anything particularly new. What it did was massively accelerate the ability to move people and goods across land. That acceleration changed everything… In the U.S. it standardized time, it nationalized commerce. Around the world it broke the lock of power on maritime cities that used to control commerce… and on and on.

Similarly the Internet, and social technologies in particular, do not create much that is new in the way of content (or even human interaction as Berkun notes) but the medium massively accelerates our ability to create, share, connect and collaborate. That acceleration of our innate capacity and desire to be social is exactly what makes social technologies transformative. Where I agree with Berkun's statement above is that the same rules of social etiquette will apply in this media. That is exactly what stuns so many corporations believing they can migrate essentially antisocial behaviors (hack PR blogs, social media gimmick campaigns etc.) into "social" media.

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Agreed. People can really suck. But "change" is a value neutral term. It doesn't imply good or bad and while it is true that many negative human traits will accompany these technologies, it is hard to overstate the magnitude of the changes that are taking place as a direct result of social media - new ways to communicate, stars ( including academics finding an audience) born from YouTube, bloggers redefining journalism and science, open source software dethroning traditional players, the demise of established industries like publishing, music and entertainment, with other industries like telecommunications and manufacturing, retailing queuing up for their turn. We see social technologies organizing spontaneous rallies in California, Moldavia and most recently Iran. That is change. I would also argue that the democratic promise of these tools - the promise that people can connect with each other without an intermediary (I know all of the ways that this may not turn out to be the case - but still...) holds the possibility of distributing power more evenly. If there is one root problem in much of this world - it is the concentration of power wielded by a small minority. We should celebrate any technology that lowers barriers to communication. caveat: Scott Berkun is an O'Reilly Author and in my defense, I owned his book Myths of Innovation long before I joined O'Reilly.

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