(I’m about to make a video about this, so I would appreciate feedback!)
What the hell is social media? Doesn’t it sound like something you need an antibiotic for? It seems like a throw away phrase that defies any meaning. Sure, I know that using the term ‘New Media’ for services like Wordpress, YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook is vastly out of date, especially since they have been dramatically affecting our culture for quite some time now, but does ‘Social Media’ describe the rapidly transforming communications landscape?
Does that mean that print and broadcasting were not social? I sure remember sharing clippings of articles and calling in requests to radio stations. So what really is so different about the mediums that are rapidly changing our politics, brands, and culture?
Mass media wielded power in the 20th Century for individual barons in a way that would make a Roman Emperor blush. Tightly controlled messages could be relayed to millions without response through the presses or the airwaves. A handful of corporations massaged tremendous influence over government and markets by monopolizing expensive distribution and production technologies.
Marshal McLuhan, philosopher and thinker quixotically once said “The Medium is the Message.” I always interpreted that to mean that regardless of what the originating story, the strengths and limitations of the medium transformed the message. For instance during the “Desert Storm” war, coverage in print, crafted and edited a day before publishing on paper was much less visceral than the night-vision video coverage from the front lines repeatedly broadcasted twenty-four hours a day by cable news networks. The very same events were altered by the timeliness of the distribution and sensuality of the medium.
Since the birth of digitally networked media in the late 1990s a power shift has been in process. The cost of both production and distribution for text, images, audio, and video has fallen to nearly zero. Time remains the only consistent variable. New user interfaces have made communication to the world accessible and decentralized to individuals. Everyone has equal empowerment to wield all of the communication formats. No hierarchal authority can compete with the news coverage sourced by crowds of strangers witnessing and transmitting their experiences simultaneously across self publishing networks.
Neither Tehran, Beijing, nor Washington D.C. is equipped to confront the snarky, folksy, passionate production of content by every-day human beings. The technology has become transparent. The stake holders in the digital revolution have to pass the “Grandma Factor,” my term for services that are so easy to use that even your maternal elder can empower herself.
The truth is there is only one determining factor that separates ‘traditional media’ from the the truly ‘new,’ the mechanisms behind the media are invisible. The machines have become so sophisticated that they have eliminated the complexity, diminished the need for elite leadership, and bridged the gaps between class and nationality.
What is left is a landscape of communication so inconsistent, democratic, vulnerable, funny and fickle that there is only one way to describe it: human. For the first time since we left the oral tradition trailing behind us in the dust of history, we have come full circle and invented a truly human medium.
If you have any doubt that this is a human media revolution, follow the transformative effect the protesters are having upon the world view of Iran from inside their borders.. They have elicited compassion and support from the whole world without any sense of organization or direction. We are moving past the drums of official propaganda and listening to each other’s voices, we seek out the authenticity that can only emerge from sharing with peers.
So I beg you, stop calling this ’social media.’ Its a hollow disservice to the contributions and risks of your fellow human beings. As the century rolls on, the trend will become more obvious. The tools of digital witnessing will only become more accessible and the force it exerts on our philosophy, governance, and markets will only make us what we have been all along, more human.
The machine media is in its final throws. Individuals and small organizations both business and non profit will have greater advantages over the slow moving, gargantuan bodies without a soul. The corporate model will be undone by nearly anonymous strangers working in concert to reorganize our markets, our productivity, and our imagination. Its going to be rough, the changes are not predictable, the transformation is nearly unforeseen. Don’t worry though, we have an asset that we have relied upon through ice ages and famines, mass migrations and toppled empires.. the indomitable human spirit.
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