This past week’s news has been nothing short of fascinating.
The popular unrest in Iran has created an outpouring of support on the Web, which has been — truth be told, and yet again — the far and away most reliable vehicle by which unfolding events have been relayed en masse to a wider audience. Twitter, that blasted thing, has been a driving force behind a flood of impassioned dissent emerging from within borders more accustomed to presenting a uniform picture of order. First hand accounts, unsubstantiated speculation, expressions of solidarity, and propaganda have converged into a wealth of noise unprecedented in magnitude and confusion…and yet, somehow, the digital public is learning to make sense of the whole thing. The images, sounds, and messages of resistance to which we have been witness, and in whose distribution we have shared a part, defy the conventional wisdom of information production and analysis. Considering that a rising star in the U.S. State department played a role in delaying Twitter’s scheduled maintenance just long enough to let Tehran turn in for the night, it should be quite clear that the logical conclusions of the digital age have finally kicked in the doors of power (regardless of Twitter’s alternative version of events).
So, it’s a good thing that Twitter is just a toy, for otherwise we might really have a thing on our hands…
Yet, at the same time that masses are producing, organizing, and disseminating information from the disaggregated input of their peers, we are inclined to overlook more fundamental questions about the services we enjoy, particularly if these avenues are being considered as means for officialdom to engage new audiences and build public-private partnerships. Though minor on an individual basis, what concerns ought the outward-facing enterprise (government, military, NGO, and so on) have over lost messages? Dropped contacts? Ownership of the data archive? Similarly, how is a rush towards public platforms to be justified that are already reaching the bounds of actionable utility? As the data stream continues to bloat, it is accessibility to that raw information, and not its presentation, that must drive the architecture of social enabling technologies if they are to cope with the scalability and sustained interaction necessary for truly dismantling barriers to information and meaningful cooperation.
On a cautionary note, we should remember that the various means of socializing information, from established media to emerging technologies, are but extensions of the behavior of social beings. That is, digital dynamics will only be approximate representations of actual circumstances. The more the two can be aligned, the more we can expect to see generative interactions take root within, across, and among human enterprises.
I would like to think that this event is a success of the social media, of the medium through which we’re helping facilitate communication and information.
So it’s disappointing that, even in this great success, we have to shadow it with someone’s desire to buffer their political resume; “I stopped Twitter from cutting off comms!” The success of this is now because of the State Dept., because they decided they deserved to take the credit for it.
A rather famous humanitarian suggested we cannot do great things, but can do small things with great love. This last week is about millions doing small things with a great love. One man, or a small dissociated chain of command, should not get to take that away from this generation.
Matt,
Right on. If the capacity of the many is to be harnessed in unforeseeable ways, whether within enterprises or – as in this case – across borders and oceans, then assigning credit to one niche or another really does miss the point. When allowed to move towards its potential, social organization should be naturally averse to such assertions of superior vision. My point in highlighting that angle here was to note a tide of shifting attitudes towards these organic flows of “real” information that the Web will continue to enable.
I see your point.
Seeing the the water start to move and enable open interaction between greater masses of actors is particularly exciting. As is the notion that the greater number of participants is producing meaningful output, drawing us into a new facet of the user-tool cyborg relationship that has defined our species.
I am interested how mediums like SMS and the micro-blog post, which are particularly shallow compared to the information density potential of traditional media, will be assimilated into the corporate consciousness. In casual conversations, missing or ignoring an @comment or direct message is (in general) socially admissible. Will the same leniency be offered to companies that bring their HR and PR into the real-time Web?
Best Buy has started advertising a program of employees waiting to answer Twitter questions. What happens, however, if Best Buy’s application servers go down and queries are lost or unanswered for a few hours? Or if a minor margin of questions go unanswered entirely? Companies have been slammed for failed Web participation in the past (Tylenol’s viral Mom advert. comes to mind). Do you think these emerging channels will create the same twin standard?
Intriguing observation…I think “we” have been able to fool ourselves in assuming that efficiencies (or better, effectiveness) can be achieved by expecting “call and response” behaviors in digital communications, i.e. I send you a message and am owed or entitled to a reply. As a result, we see such contrivances as protocols for who may contact whom via email, or front offices that are wholly responsible for executive communications, despite the fact that anyone can get into any other inbox at the push of a button. This kind of social filtering arises because the medium itself does not lend itself to the contextual faceting that digital enables. So, I doubt we will…and I hope we won’t…expect the same symmetric standards for fundamentally asymmetric interactions.