Anthony J. BradleyWe at Gartner talk often on the societal and business impact of social computing and as you can imagine many opinions surface both pro and con. At the core of the issue is how human behaviors change and how that translates into culture and impacts business. It is easy to damn social networking as a waste of time that is rotting our children’s brains just as our parents and grandparents bemoaned television as the scourge of the new generation.
A while ago I read Andrew Keen’s book “The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet is Killing Our Culture.” Which I actually recommend since it’s significantly flawed logic spurred rich counter-arguments in my mind that was actually beneficial. At some point maybe I’ll blog a review of the book but right now I digress.
This social computing movement is about an unprecedented connecting of people with like interests and creating highly robust social circles. For example, if you were an avid fly fisherman, prior to Web 2.0 how would you share your fly fishing experiences, hear others’ stories, share information relevant to how you can derive more enjoyment from your passion (where to go, what equipment to use, new techniques etc.) You certainly could do it but it was local and limited. Now we have the globalization of passions.
I am not choosing fly fishing at random. Here is a link to a fly fishing soldier’s thank you post to his fly fishing community www.fliesandfins.com for helping him cope with being wounded in Iraq. Consider this when you start getting depressed that the Internet is killing our culture.
A few lessons here are:
- This is powerful stuff and its impact on our culture is irreversible. Become part of it or be left behind.
- Find the passion and you just might achieve social solution success
- There will always be detractors, curmudgeons, and nay-sayers but they won’t define a better future
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Category: social solutions Tags: community-value
