Why social media makes sense
June 13th, 2010 § Leave a Comment
“It is a documented fact, for example, that human consciousness influences quantum energy – the stuff everything is made of – under certain conditions.” so says Gregg Braden in the introduction of his new book.[i] He quotes “ Princeton University physicist John Wheeler[ii], “ We had this old idea, that there was a universe out there, and here is man the observer, safely protected from the universe by a six-inch slab of plate glass.[iii] And adds “Now we learn from the quantum world that even to observe so minuscule an object as an electron we have to shatter that plate glass; we have to reach in there. . . . So the old word observer simply has to be crossed off the books, and we must put in the new word participator.”[iv]
“A new civilization is emerging in our lives, and blind men everywhere are trying to suppress it. This new civilisation brings with it new family styles, changed ways of working, loving and living; a new economy; new political conflicts; and beyond all this an altered conciousness as well.” so says social critic and futurist, Alvin Toffler.[v] “Humanity faces a quantum leap forward. . . . Third Wave civilization begins to heal the historic breach between producer and consumer, giving rise to ‘prosumer’ economics of tomorrow.” He explains that the Second Wave split moved the world from being agricultural to industrial. It successful split production and consumption and created an exchange platform, the market. This was accompanied with principles of standardization, interdependency, gender and skill differentiation (or specialization), synchronisation of humans to machines (time management), concentration (space), maximisation (growth, bigness) and centralization. The Second Wave was division, compartmentalization and the splintering of things into components, smaller, manageable or rather, controllable things. The Wave broke with earth, people and systems stumbling under the pressure – it was unsustainable – to roll on towards the shore.
Toffler observes, “Throughout the Second Wave era the mass media grew more and more powerful. . . . As the Third Wave thunders in, the mass media, far from expanding their influence, are suddenly being forced to share it. . . . The oldest of the Second Wave mass media, newspapers are losing their readers. By 1973 US newspapers had reached a combined aggregate circulation of 63-million copies daily. Since 1973, however, instead of addition circulation they have began to lose it. . . . Nor were such losses due to the rie of television.”[vi] Toffler goes on to make numerous predictions of the future, many of which are suprisingly accurate. (But you will have to read the book to find out more).
What is more interesting is the emergence of the Cluetrain Manifesto (1999), almost 19 years later. A website which became a book, a book which became the basis of a new way of living, doing business and communicating with each other. No matter what social media, new media lecturer, consultant, guru, or evangelist you listen too, sooner or later they will refer to the Cluetrain Manifesto.
Why? The Cluetrain Manifesto proposes that companies move outside their six-inch plate glass bubbles and engage with their customers. That instead of viewing the customer as being on the outside, the consumer who is separated from the means of production, the enemy who needs to be overcome, manipulated and seduced to buy, the them, but nevertheless the source of income – the market.
Ironically those inside the bubble, the organisation, do not appear to consider that they too live outside many more bubbles than they inhabit. It is the typical pedestrian/motorist duality. When you are a pedestrian you are conscious that the motorist has more ‘hurting power’ but do whatever you can to wrong foot him. And it is the same when you are the motorist.
Perhaps this can be better explained with a sports club analogy. You join a sports club mainly because you are interested in that particular sport, particularly to participate in the sport with like-minded people. But then you get elected to the committee, which manages the club. Suddenly, you feel special, exempt from the rules of the club. You feel that you can impose all sorts of rules and regulations, fee increases, punishments etc without considering how you, a member of the club, would feel if you are ONLY a member. This sense of being divorced from the members, this autocratic behaviour, this dominance through ‘power’, this elitism, is the very thing that the Cluetrain Manifesto protests, and Toffler highlights as a major pressure which lead to the breaking of the Second Wave.
Last century, the Cluetrain Manifesto called desperately for a conversation not a monologue, for inclusion, not exclusion, for respect, not manipulation. In the second decade of this century, Leroy Stick (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/leroy-stick/why-i-co-opted-bps-twitte_b_599283.html) called desperately for a conversation when he launched the BPGlobalPR twitter page, following what is possibly the biggest and worst oil disaster ever. Off the southwest coast of America, the Deepwater Horizon explosion in the Gulf of Mexico is releasing gallons, no one really know how many gallons, of oil into the ocean daily, nor how many have already escaped, some 50-odd days later. BP tells us they are dealing with it, but they are not giving us enough information for us to believe them even if we want to. Nor, when they are obviously stuck, are they asking for new ideas or suggestions.
Sticks’ complete dissatisfaction, 30 years after the publishing of The Third Way and a similar number since the comments by physicist John Wheeler, shows that although much of big business is still behind the six inch plate glass, the people on the outside have the tools to protest, and protest loudly. On the outside we have the tools to reach in and if you want to stop us, talk to us, because no matter how big you are, how much money you have, there are more of us. Individually we are insignificant together we are and can change the world.
The Third Wave means that we can reclaim our earth, our time, our lives, our space and most importantly our independence, originality and creativity. We are not working stiffs, nor are we just a marketplace. The Cluetrain Manifesto means we want to be part of our world, equal, intelligent and should you ask, we will help you. You are not alone, we are all in this world together.
This is why social media makes sense. You are not alone. Neither are we. You, with we (your them), could be us.
[i] Braden, G 2008, The spontaneous healing of belief: shattering the paradigm of false limits. Hay House, Inc. pviii.
[ii] John Archibald Wheeler (July 9, 1911 – April 13, 2008) was an eminent American theoretical physcist and one of the later collaborators of Albert Einstein. Wikipaedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Archibald_Wheeler accessed 13/06/2010.
[iii] Braden, G 2008, The spontaneous healing of belief: shattering th paradigm of false limits. Hay House, Inc. p37-38 from John Wheeler as quoted by Peat, FD 1987, Synchroncity: The bridge between matter and mind, Bantam Books, NY, p4.
[iv] Ibid
[v] Toffler, A 1980, The Third Wave, Wiliam Collins Sons & Co. Ltd, London, p23.
[vi] Toffler, A 1980, The Third Wave, Wiliam Collins Sons & Co. Ltd, London, p169.
