Social media is not about Twitter, or Facebook, or YouTube, or The Next Big Thing. These are just the chocolate dustings on top of the froth that sits on top of a whole new social cappucino and to understand it you don’t need to understand technology. You need to understand history.
From the year dot until Gutenberg’s invention of moveable type and the printing press, information had no means of mass distribution, except through storytelling.
Gutenberg’s invention made the widespread distribution of information possible and it also cemented a marriage between information and its means of distribution that lasted for 600 years. Within this marriage, distribution became the dominant partner because it almost always cost more money to distribute stuff than it did to create it in the first place. This relationship between information and distribution – which could be termed the Gutenberg principle – meant that the flow of information within our society became institutionalised to generate the revenues necessary to pay for the high costs involved (printing presses, TV and radio networks etc).
The institutions that evolved around the Gutenberg principle were not just media and publishing, although these were the most notable ‘children of Gutenberg’, almost every institution present in today’s society fundamentally owes its existence and structure to the basic rules about information distribution established by Gutenberg. A bank, for example, at is most basic is simply a mediator of information about people who have money and people who want it.
The social media revolution represents the breaking of the fundamental equation that marries information to distribution. Broadband internet access and the tools of what is being called social media mean that it now costs nothing to distribute information to a mass audience. Information has been separated from its means of distribution and it is now free (in a liberty sense as well as a costs nothing sense). Information can now flow between one individual and all of the individuals for whom that information may be of relevance, without any form of institutionalised intervention, except the provision of a freely available technological infrastructure. I call this the post-Gutenberg, or socialised information, principle.
As a result the political, economic and social advantages that lay within the control of information channels are gradually dissipating. Power is shifting away from institutionalised channels (think newspapers and ads) into processes of information facilitation (think Google) and forms of community (think social networks).
This new world is in its infancy, but its principal characteristics are starting to become apparent as is the significant transformational challenge for organisations that wish to manage the transition from one world to the next. It is only by understanding the shifts that are taking place and switching investment from channel based assets into assets and competencies that reflect the collaborative, collective and communal characteristics of the post-Gutenberg world that organisations will be able to succeed.
This revolution is not going to happen overnight – but it is happening and almost nothing can stop it.
Technorati Tags: Richard+Stacy, socialmedia
Really enjoyed your insights. I wonder whether economic interests as they begin to exert more influence how they will impact our traditional concepts of community. For example if you were to ask the people using Facebook I’m guessing they think they are the
“owners/stakeholders” in their content and community. If you ask
Facebook they probably have a much different opinion. Going to
be very interesting to watch the shift
While I basically agree with the ideas expressed I must quibble with the details.
1) Information is not really freely distributed, while it may be free to you, someone, somewhere is paying the bill, free in this sense is an illusion.
2) Semantics: If a revolution doesn’t happen quickly, it’s not a revolution, it’s evolution (which I think is the more appropriate term for this process).
3) Nothing can stop it? Sure it can, in its tracks.
Politics & force can – and in some places do.
The freedoms we have are not universal nor assured to be in perpetuity. Fortuitous events happen, prosperity happens, enjoy them while you can. But don’t assume they are forever.
Economics can shut this down in a flash
(loop back to #1)
Someone somewhere has to pay the bill.
Cheers
Rick,
To quibble back:
1) Yes, there is still a bill, but the point is that it is now very very small, which means that the ability to distribute information to a mass audience (and the ability for information to be separated from distribution) is essentially available to all for virtually no cost. The only reason we are obsessed with monetisation and economics is because we still use the old models for valuation. The social media revolution will re-write economics, rather than be beholden to it.
2) Revolutions are not determined by time but by degree. The agricultural revolution probably took many generations but it transformed the future of the human species. The industrial revolution played out over many decades, the Gutenberg revolution likewise rippled across the world over a long period of time (it was called the Renaissance).
3) It can only really be stopped if someone pulls the plug on the whole internet. Possible, but pretty difficult, in democracies at any rate.
Your point is well taken.
For the small user who doesn’t have to pay to use twitter yes it is “free” but they still pay to be connected. And someone if funding Twitter (and the like) in hopes on monetizing it. VC’s are not philanthropists.
My point was that there was a difference between truly “free” & what is not directly paid for. When you say free I think you mean not directly paid for. This may be quibbling but I think is an important distinction.
I would heartily disagree about the re-writing of economics. I started to write a reply of why but it was too superficial, we’ll just have to agree to disagree, or have beer and argue it out.
As for your thoughts on revolution, these are perfectly valid from the point of view of **history**. I was trained as an historian, what you are doing is categorizing the past in light of today’s interpretation. Perfectly valid to do so, as long as you recognize that this is what you are doing. People at the time may have (and usually did have) a different view of things).
To speak of current events as a revolution I stand by my assertion that time is relevant.
And the stopping of the web in democracies may be theoretically conceivable and I totally agree with you that this is unlikely. But we don’t all have the privilege of living in one, and the world’s most populous country isn’t one.
I was looking at the global picture as opposed to the local one as you seemed to be talking big picture.
Cheers
It sounded a little like you were also using the word free in the sense of liberty as well. The main concern I would have about the internet in that regard is that every opinion expressed on it has a great big link at the side saying ‘follow me on twitter/facebook’. So people aren’t technically free to be read anywhere – twitter and facebook are the means of distribution (unless in China) – even most people with their own personal sites are found via central hub sites that we could virtually count on one hand. That trend is growing, not fading, and as it heads more in that direction it becomes increasingly attractive to the biggest businesses which want to exert some form of purchasing control over us. People are never really freely distributing their own material but instead relying on a central organisation which could easily turn into something less benevolent. If this central linking point was some sort of open-source project hosted by millions of servers then that would be free to an extent, but everyone being forced into membership of the same social network in order to stand a decent chance of being heard… not so free.