Honing the past versus building the future

Image via http://www.oldukphotos.com: Kingsway 1920

This decade looks increasingly as if it will be defined by the clash between those seeking to make the old world more efficient and those aiming to build a new one.

By which I mean as we hurtle towards the flowering of the full impact of digitally-driven faster, easier, cheaper, group-forming abilities, the defenders of the old will seek to use the technologies simply to lower the cost of doing the things they've always done.

This can loosely by characterised as channel management. Business as usual with a veneer of 'social' technologies at best. This is the world of the turn key solution.The rest of us, those building the new, must find ways to bring them with us.

The urgency becomes greater by the day. There is an oft-quoted peculiarity about the impact of new technologies on society: a consistent 20 year cycle between innovation and its widespread adoption - together with the impact wrought.

I spoke about this in New York in 2008 when I suggested the key technology in our case is user-friendly social networks - as these delivered simple and cheap group-forming into the hands of the mainstream.

I benchmark the beginning of this process as 2003 - the year MySpace launched.

Which means next year will see us half way through the 20-year cycle of disruption. My favourite example of this (via Vin Crosbie) is the impact of the car. In 1900 the streets of London were full of horses. 20 Years later? Full of cars, trucks and buses - and garages, and petrol stations, and new roads, and people and products travelling further, more regularly, more quickly.

In 1910 if you were a horse cart manufacturer you were likely feeling the pinch. But you still had a choice.
You could have chosen to stick to business as usual and used the new tech to make your business more efficient. You could have bought in cheaper supplies, wood, nuts, bolts, studs, leather. Delivery trucks could get you them cheaper and faster. You could deliver your carriages to customers farther afield - on the back of trucks.

You could make your old world more efficient with the tech of the new.

Or you could have joined in making the new world - turning your skills and resources to truck and car making. (If you want a starker example still - consider the cavalry charges and the emergence of the tank in World War I).

One scenario gave you a fighting chance of still being a business in 1920. And if you still want to be in business in 2023 you know the choice to make.

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• There is no insight button (fasterfuture.blogspot.com)

The great disruption of social networks reaches its tipping point

I feel like I've been warning that global warming was about to reach its tipping point - and suddenly images of the arctic glaciers collapsing, crashing into the sea at an alarming rate, are being broadcast around the world, providing hard evidence for all to see.

The great disruption of social networks has reached its tipping point. The theory of the impact of the networked world has become real. The evidence is now with us.

A short time ago I wrote that the disruption caused by social networks had only just begun. I thought we'd been guilty of over-estimating the change that the internet heralded - and of underestimating the significance of the rapid charge toward ubiquity of social connectedness - via the easy-to-use tools of 2.0 - social networks in their various guises.

But it looked to me like a two-speed 'social' world had emerged:
1. UGC-powered broadcast models (where 99% of the 'audience' consumed what 1% created)
2. Total Communities: where to take part you have to create part (eg twitter, secondlife, facebook (reversing the 99/1)

But now, Via JP Rangaswami's Confused of Calcutta, comes evidence of the inconvenient truth of the speed with which the networked world is emerging - a shock for those of us who perhaps thought the UGC-powered broadcast model was something more persistant than a hangover of the broadcast world.

It's evidence of the speeding up from broadcast to networked, from centre to edge.

It concerns youtube - one of the models I placed firmly on the UGC-powered broadcast side of the equation.

In the past our assumptions were that it followed the 1% create, 99% audience model.

That may be changing - and very rapidly indeed.

JP Rangaswami tells us that Dr Michael Wesch, (of The Machine is Us/ing Us and A Vision of Students Today) is speaking on the Anthropology of YouTube at the Library of Congress in Washington DC.

And this, according to the Library of Congress news release is what he will be talking about:
"More video material has been uploaded to YouTube in the past six months than has ever been aired on all major networks combined, according to cultural anthropologist Michael Wesch. About 88 percent is new and original content, most of which has been created by people formerly known as “the audience.” "Wesch will discuss the three-year-old video-sharing Web site in a lecture titled “The Anthropology of YouTube” at 4 p.m. on Monday, June 23, in the Montpelier Room on the sixth floor of the Library of Congress’ James Madison Building, 101 Independence Ave. S.E., Washington, D.C."

Update: www.twitter.com/mwesch: " finishing highly experimental presentation for Lib. of Congress ... 50 minute video made of over 300+ YouTube vids that I will narrate live"

I think this part is worth repeating:
"In the last six months...About 88 percent is new and original content, most of which has been created by people formerly known as “the audience.”

The numbers were so impressive that I thought I ought to check with Dr Wesch. I am extremely grateful for how rapidly he has responded:

"The numbers are as fuzzy as the distinction between professional and amateur. We are very confident that at least 80.3% of all content is UGC ... and as much as 95% (depending on how it is defined).
"The difficulty comes because many "users" are now creating near-professional-level content and are often getting paid for it - even if they did not expect to get paid for it when they started creating videos. I would consider myself one of these people in this fuzzy category (see my youtube account "mwesch")
"And one more clarification: the 88% figure refers only to what is new and original (and may be ugc or pro) - the other 12% are repeats, reloads, or stuff that was copied from TV, etc.. I think 80.3% is the safest figure for what we call "unambiguously user-generated content"

The notion that we are all publishers now (and that also means we are all advertisers now) has taken a giant leap from theoretically possible to actually happening.

The networked world is becoming reality before our eyes.

The end is in sight for the silent majority
When all is said and done Youtube may yet remain a UGC-powered broadcast model, attracting large audiences to consume that which is created by ever-larger numbers of user-creators. But as surely as participation rises towards the norm, so those who would passively consume will fall into a silent minority.

They'll get as much as they ever got from the broadcast world, which is to say, rather less than those of us enjoying the fruits of the networked world.


I'll be speaking about some of the implications of this in New York next week. Find me at WidgetWebExpo I'll be in NYC from Saturday evening.

Social networks and the broadcast conversation starter

I spoke at EPublishing Innovation Forum in London today and it was fun. The brilliant Vin Crosbie was doing the keynote and I'm delighted to say he came by to say hi after my presentation because I'd reminded him of some important stuff that he usually forgets to say - the why of the internet is people reaching out to find other people. And we had a great conversation.

That highlighted something for me: presenting makes you the deliverer of content - this waves a flag for the start of conversation. As a presenter the audience has acquired some very useful metadata about me and my purpose and that triggers conversation galore once the broadcast (me speaking from the stage) is over. There's a lesson in here about the value of content in a broadcast mode which media could get something from. I'm going to think about this some more.

The other thing is that Vin's keynote covers much of the theoretical framework I'm interested in so I kind of adapted my presentation on the hoof.

I floated an idea I've been toying with in recent days - that perhaps we were guilty of over estimating the impact of the internet before the arrival of ubiquitous social networking.

Social networks have only gained currency in the last five years or so. Is it a coincidence that this has been the same period in which broadcast media has seen its revenues dwindle and its audiences shrink?

The real ease with which groups of purpose can organise in social networks is something that wasn't so easily enabled on forums and in newsgroups of emails.

When new tools become truly ubiquitous change happens. In this case I'm suggesting the new tools isn't simply the internet, it's the refinement of social networks (networking for the masses?)

The process of using social networks has educated a new and huge generation in the value of real-time synchronous communication which is the guts of the formation of communities of purpose.

Just a thought at this stage, and one lashed down at speed driven by battery run-down fear! Your input welcome.

I'm on my way to Cannes now, for MeM and the Meffys. More from there as live as I can make it!