Image by Tony the Misfit via Flickr

As we watch the sordid cavalcade of media gaffes – from Anthony Weiner‘s MMS messages to Chevy’s “slip of the tongue” (someone tweeting on behalf of Chevy mistakenly thought they were using their personal account when they declared that Detroit was full of terrible drivers) we are seeing  a society that is coming to terms with the blurring line between text and speech.  That is, the ephemeral nature of all speech is being given the permanence of text.

We will spend the next generation coming to terms with the consequences.

Once something is said it cannot be unsaid.  True.  But historically it couldn’t be shared to a wider circle of listeners.  Speech is not permanent.  Speech gives way to time and passes into the fog of memory.  Therefore the social norms governing speech are more forgiving.  We are expected, allowed even, to say things  without due consideration, in close company, knowing that we will regret some portion of what we say.  We are able to use the full context of a conversation (who is there, what has been said before etc.) to nuance our speech and say things that wouldn’t look good when reduced to text.

And yet on social networks we speechify, we talk and we are saying plenty of things we might regret.   Such speech isn’t meant to be a permanent record.  But it is. As Meghan Garber writes in a Nieman Lab post:

As a culture… we tend to insist on categorizing our communication, drawing thick lines between words that are spoken and words that are written. So libel is, legally, a different offense than slander; the written word, we assume, carries the heft of both deliberation and proliferation and therefore a moral weight that the spoken word does not. Text, we figure, is: conclusive, in that its words are the deliberate products of discourse; inclusive, in that it is available equally to anyone who happens to read it; exclusive, in that it filters those words selectively; archival, in that it preserves information for posterity; and static, in that, once published, its words are final.

We are hurtling towards a world of total information capture where email, texting, instant message and mobile video are documenting our everyday speech and action – in effect rendering all speech as text.    There will be few places to “talk” without that talk being given the weight and permanence of text.

We are then faced with two options: Either give up the liberties that speech allows – thinking “out loud,” using the context of the conversation to add meaning to a comment and so on – or become more lenient with speech that happens to become text.  In the case of Weiner, his behavior is unacceptable in any context.   As a society we understand his transgression and he is being punished for it.  Fair enough.   In the case of Chevy, a mistake was punished through Chevy firing both the Tweeter and the entire agency he worked for.

I hope in future we are able to see the distinction and dole out our punishments accordingly.   We all say things we regret.   Now we all write things we regret.  Perhaps as a result of this shared reality we will learn a bit more forgiveness for each other.

This originally appeared as an  O’Reilly Radar post .  Subsequently this issue came into sharp relief again when “Duke Nukem Forever” publisher 2K Games fired its PR agency for threatening (on Twitter) to blacklist journalists who gave the game a negative review.  While the threat was subsequently retracted the PR agency is still fired.

This is cross posted from O’Reilly Radar

I was struck by this photo that appeared Sunday in the New York Times.  It shows a crowd of Egyptian protesters listening to a military announcement.   Try to count the number of people in the crowd who DO NOT have a mobile device recording the action.

Expanding people’s ability to communicate (from printing press to telegraph to telephone to text messaging) is always a revolutionary act.   Communications technologies do not create the conditions for civic action (the unrest in Egypt is due to longstanding political repression) – but they can accelerate the entire process by (1) dramatically expanding the number of people directly involved in gathering, distributing and consuming information  and (2) allowing a positive feedback loop to develop where people  see the effect of their actions in real-time, which simultaneously reinforces commitment and recruits more members into the cause.

We tend to think of these technologies as inherently democratic.  But the rub in all of this is that while these technologies democratize communications they tend to monopolize surveillance and control.    So while more of us are capable of holding an open, peer-to-peer discussion we are doing so with the consent and under the watchful (or subpoena-able) eye of just a handful of corporations or governments.  And when citizen calls-to-action conflict with government calls for quiet, the government holds more of the cards.  Vodafone has shut down cell phone communications in Egypt,  the Egyptian government has effectively shut down Internet communications and there are now calls for Ham radio operators to lend assistance as Egypt is being pushed back down the communications ladder.

In the “rich world” our experience of  technology is often Utopian and our forecasts of negative consequences are framed only through our experience of current circumstance; we simply can’t imagine what it is like to live in a repressive government or believe that we will ever live under one.  But the seemingly benign governments in which we reside are an historical contingency.   If the past provides any lesson it is that governments will wax and wane in their concern for civil liberties and human rights.  Yet our digital profile (purchase history, political and personal associations etc.) will remain.  Through our participation in these technologies we are donating our data to a vast, indelible reservoir whose future utility is unknown to us…

I am actually optimistic about the future of the Internet as a medium to promote civil liberty, free expression, better government and corporate citizenship (if one can credibly use such a phrase).      However I don’t think it happens on its own.   The Internet needs an architecture (legal and physical) to achieve such ends.  Paradoxically I believe it requires some form of regulation to maintain its dynamic, emergent and decentralized properties so that when any government or corporation wants to hit the kill switch – they can’t.

Is access to communications a fundamental human right?  If so, should a corporation have the ability to abrogate that right at the request of a host government?  As we watch the battle between the Egyptian government’s attempts to throttle information flow (including how corporations defy or collaborate with these attempts) and the people’s struggle to maintain access to communications – we are seeing the  contours of a struggle that will exemplify the next decades of political and policy changes as we try to define the increasingly critical relationship between technology and civil liberties.

Related articles

• Vodafone confirms Egypt lock-down (go.theregister.com)
• Still No Internet or Mobile In Egypt (prblognews.com)
• Regime throws information blackout over Egypt – ABC Online (news.google.com)
• Regime throws information blackout over Egypt – ABC Online (news.google.com)

I rarely do product or service reviews here but, as with Posterous, I am occasionally moved by something remarkable.

Quora is a site that allows users to post questions for a community to answer as best they can.  Nothing new there.  What interests me for this post is how Quora has put new life into a fairly old concept.

The information design deserves a bit of spotlighting because it is what  impressed me right away.  Here is a sample page:

What’s going on here?  In this single, elegant page are so many ways to engage an audience around a question.

1. The topic and categorization are crisp and clear:

You can quickly navigate to focus on questions related to Foursquare or Public Relations.  You can quickly find your community of shared interest.  For my part I am interested in Foursquare as an exemplar of what is taking place with location based services and mobile.  I can easily find and drill into this area of interest.

2. Social media is a distributed communications network – each viewer has an option to publish the question with their personal network of contacts and, in so doing, expand Quora’s audience.  Quora fully capitalizes on this by leveraging every possible way to get this question exposed to more viewers:

3.  Quora understands the nature of questioning, giving you multiple ways to “follow” the progress of a question that is being “answered.”  In fact, many of the questions on Quora do not have a definitive answer, they are more like an unfolding narrative from multiple vantage points.  They are opinions.  Following a question will allow you to have emails as the answers come in.  The ongoing answering is often more interesting than just the winning answer.

4. The  image capture below also shows how, like Amazon, -or any other savvy, content-rich site – Quora always provides you with a next step – another place to go based on what you might be interested in.    It is a simple and ageless truism on the net: – never give people a dead-end.

5. Below you can see that Quora heeds Dave McClure’s timeless rant, “The Faces, the *FACES*… it’s *ALL* about the Motherf**king FACES!”

Human beings respond to faces.  We associate with them much more than text and we remember them.  Here Quora uses my avatar to associate with my question.

6. Trading on the concept of social currency (people care deeply about how they perceived in any social structure and will go to great lengths to enhance their status), Quora allows you to build reputation in their system by answering questions and commenting.  They also allow you to have a bio so people can learn more about you after reading your answer.  Not coincidentally this also serves to increase the quality of answers in my opinion.  Finally, Quora allows voting to determine the winning answer.   There is something at stake when you answer a question.

7. Quora also allows anonymous answers which is a double-edged sword.   In the first case anonymous posts can encourage trolls (but when will the net ever be without trolls?).   However allowing anonymous answers can also allow internal sources from a company to post in relevant cases.

Finally, metadata about the question itself is exposed, showing you activity and popularity of the question itself.  This is valuable when trying to assess where topics and questions sit on the trend-line of interest .

The lessons I take from Quora:

First.  Social Integration (a horrible phrase but…)
Quora is social – not just from a technology perspective of integrating with various platforms (Facebook, Twitter etc.) to extend reach, but it also trades heavily on how and why people contribute to community – it leverages the hidden  economy of sharing, reputation and status seeking.  It is also building itself around a tight cluster of people to begin with (silicon valley from the feel of it).

Second, Information Design. It isn’t just what you do – but how you do it that matters.   Social Integration is what makes sense today — how Quora does it is what makes them special.   I spent the early part of my career as an information architect, designing the labeling, navigation and structure of early ecommerce sites.  Back in those days you could pretty much guarantee a huge lift in conversation rates (sales) just by redesigning the online path to purchase.

Finally, the big lesson: There is Always Room for Innovation.    We are just at the beginning of the digital shift and we haven’t come close to understanding all of the mechanics of solving problems the right way.  Just as Yahoo Answers clearly was not the only way to crowdsource answers (hence this post on Quora),  eBay is not the only method to conduct an auction, Wikipedia is not the end-all for compiling an online encyclopedia.   There are thousands of improvements we are yet to experience and I tip my hat to the people at Quora for believing there was better way to get things done.

Related articles

• QuoraTop Ranks the Most Followed Quora Accounts (louisgray.com)
• A view at Quora from the Social Media Marketing Community (ecairn.com)
• Why I Don’t Buy the Quora Hype (techcrunch.com)

A fascinating article at the Daily Beast chronicled an attempt to reverse engineer the Facebook social news feed. It sought to answer questions about how and who Facebook chooses to display on your news feed page.

Not surprisingly, Facebook makes assumptions based on behavior to ensure that it propagates people and information with the highest likelihood of gaining attention or engagement. For example, individuals whose profiles are “stalked” by others show up disproportionately in news feeds because Facebook assumes they must be stalked for good reason. They must be interesting.

As Facebook becomes an increasingly vital part of how businesses connect with customers, the algorithms determining who gets attention will become increasingly important. They shape business communications and behavior.

We have now a long history of content being written to accommodate the rules of search engines — particularly Google. We research keywords and then ensure they are placed at the front of our headlines and titles. We reorganize content into staccato bursts of bullet points and subtitles, and so on. Optimization of this kind now dominates all professional content production on the web and shapes our experience as consumers of that content.

As our social, economic and political lives are increasingly mediated through a few consolidated technologies such as Facebook and Google, software exerts a profound influence on the way we engage with one another. The natural, sociological secrets of how to gain attention are being codified. In turn, this creates a normative effect on how we behave. We conform to the rules embedded in the code.

We have always written lead lines with an eye to attracting readers, but there are two aspects here that are new:

1. The widespread incorporation of scientific rigor into the exercise. For example, the Huffington Post does A/B tests of its own headlines to favor the winning headline.
2. The uniformity of the resulting norms. We are conforming to a few dominant algorithms.

Gaining attention in this world becomes as much about the science of standing out as the art of being outstanding. And every link forged is a form of currency exchange where the market favors the heavyweights.

While I don’t doubt that we will see a continued wellspring of creativity emerge from an open web, these algorithms themselves represent a bias toward those who decipher the code. Doing so requires resources that favor the large over the small, and the organization over the individual. There is nothing new to this progression, but it does run counter to the heroic individual archetype (the lone blogger, the basement video show broadcast around the world, etc.) that the web often celebrates as its own unique progeny.

This is cross-posted from O’Reilly Radar

Related articles

• Cracking the Facebook Code (thedailybeast.com)

This article was just posted on Forbes.com

I read The Checklist Manifesto eager to be enlightened.  I wasn’t.  Don’t get me wrong… it is a good book and likely a worthwhile read for almost anyone outside of industries that have a long history with project management.    The red-thread of the book is this:  simple checklists can dramatically improve results of complex projects – even those that require a high degree of operator expertise (doctors, structural engineers etc.).   Successful checklists detail both the sequence of necessary activities as well as the  communication checkpoints to ensure dialog among project participants…

The red-thread of the book is this: Simple checklists can dramatically improve results of complex projects–even those that require a high degree of operator expertise (doctors, structural engineers, etc.). Successful checklists detail both the sequence of necessary activities as well as the communication checkpoints to ensure dialog among project participants.

I have been in technology all of my professional life. It is a checklist-driven discipline. Why? Because computers are extremely dumb; they only do what you tell them. They can’t adapt to new circumstances (generally speaking) or ask you for clarification or make assumptions as to what you really wanted. So you need to be crystal clear about how the human team is going to work in order to get the computer to “behave” exactly as desired (look and feel, business logic, data structure, etc.). This involves project management with tight sequencing of activities, dependencies and regular meetings to revise expectations and make decisions. When I realized that the checklist author Atul Gawande refers to is basically the formalized result of good project management, I felt a bit let down. I come from a checklist culture, so what is the big surprise?

The book did, however, help me reframe an issue I have had for some time: When checklist cultures meet non-checklist cultures the clash can be ugly. Much of the difficulty that “digital” people have integrating their discipline with others (traditional PR or marketing for instance) derives from this culture clash.

My experience with this goes back many years. I was helping deliver large scale e-commerce sites in the ’90s when the Web was still very new. Our clients were almost always in marketing; a classic non-checklist culture. Marketers like to change their mind. This is generally acceptable since merchandising, campaigns and promotions usually get tweaked until the last moment (and beyond) and consist of lots of humans running around in an adaptive frenzy.

But when you apply this method to software development, you are in trouble. I would begin a project by explaining a fairly sophisticated project schedule (checklist) in order to set clear expectations: “At this milestone ‘A’ is done and we move on to ‘B.’ Once we are doing ‘B,’ we can no longer make changes to ‘A’ …” and so on. The clients would agree, then promptly begin calling with new changes to “A.”

“Digital” work is often some variant of software development. Websites, microsites, Facebook pages and applications, etc., all fall into this category. A major disconnect between digital and non-digital cultures is the gulf that separates checklist culture from non-checklist culture, and 15 years on we are still feeling it.

One of the reasons this issue persists is the personality profiles that are drawn to marketing and advertising; they are generally selected for creativity–not process fanaticism. People who become successful in these firms have often not had much exposure to checklist cultures and find them inimical to creative thinking. Checklisting doesn’t eliminate creativity, but it does usually put the bulk of the creative effort up front before the dumb computers start getting involved. Maintaining a highly creative environment while still honoring some form of the checklist (project management) is the balance that we should be seeking.

As communications and PR moves from a highly human discipline of getting work accomplished (person-to-person) and increasingly relies on a digital intermediary, marketers and communications people increasingly need to understand the value of the checklist. For them, I highly recommend the book.

I have been watching the Old Spice phenomenon with interest and admiration so don’t get me wrong; it will set the bar for great, creative work in advertising but is it a high point for social media?  I don’t think so.

The campaign, with its barrage of rapid-response YouTube videos distributed through Twitter, is modern advertising done extremely well; it acknowledges (and capitalizes on the fact) that we live in a world suffused with social tools, but it isn’t exemplary of them or the fullest expression of their potential.   It is still essentially a high-polish, broadcast campaign (technically one might better call it “transmedia“).  In fact, I would contend that this is exactly why the campaign has been so successful in bridging the gap from its origins as a television commercial.  They maintained the formula of high production standards that marked the original.   They kept the responses exclusive, selectively engaging people that would keep them “on brand” while maintaining a steady stream of high-quality content.

At the end of the day, the breathless analysis of Old Spice as the zenith of social media leaves one to wonder what the commentariat think social media is, and whom it is actually for.

I once read that in the 1960’s comics and counterculture figures began using profanity in part because they felt that the use of such language precluded their message/movement from being co-opted.   They were, of course, temporarily right and permanently wrong.  It took a bit longer but nearly every song of that age has found its way into an advertisement.  Its slogans have been re-engineered to suit – and peace, harmony (“I’d like to give the world a Coke”) and even songs critiquing material pursuits (Janis Joplin for Mercedes-Benz ) have been stripped of their original intent and attached to one product or other.

So it goes with the social media land grab currently underway as every major corporation rushes to stake a claim on our attention and our loyalty.   They are co-opting a medium whose fundamental and radical proposition is a promotion of interpersonal connection, many-to-many communication, and the privilege of social norms over business norms.

Further, the discourse that informs the way we define social media in practice is being shaped by an army of consultants whose personal stake in this game is deeply tied to the clients that they serve.  More often these are big corporations.  Thus the analysis of BP all too often focused on how BP could help itself during the crisis rather than how society at large might better use these tools to come to grips with corporate malfeasance.   The conversations about Nestle’s “failure” focused on prescriptions that supported the consultant’s value proposition more than the real-world context that surrounded the Nestle incident.   On a much more benign level the analysis of Old Spice would lead you to believe that it is the pinnacle of social media– when in my opinion it rises just above a clever extension of a broadcast message.

The transformative nature of social media lies in the fact that it enables a more equitable distribution of power, ingenuity and creativity.    The sea change that comes from realizing this potential is not about technology or marketing.  It certainly (from my point of view) isn’t about how corporations can profit or dominate.  It is all about how a major shift in our own sense of identity (we are all now authors and authorities), social norms and a new mode of production might give us a better world.   It’s greatest exemplars then are drawn from the grass roots, the marginalized, the entrepreneurial, the unintended and even the seemingly trivial.

Yes, let’s celebrate some interesting corporate case studies.  But let’s keep our eyes on the bigger prize and promise of social media.  Doing so is part of making sure that promise is realized.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Old Spice and the Return of Ad-Power: Are “Transformats” the Future of Marketing? (designmind.frogdesign.com)
• Old Spice: The Archetype of a Successful Social Media Campaign (Mashable)

The story of the social web is a story about how people, when given the ability to freely communicate – do so in great numbers. And when they do they abide by social rules (be yourself, listen, build relationships through give and take etc.). Social Tools Follow Social Rules. When people are allowed to exercise their innate drive to be social they expect the companies they interact with (and work for) to get social as well. Thus social rules become the new rules of doing business.

The problem is, companies have spent generations codifying rules of conduct to make communications – with employees as well as customers – cost-effective, uniform and risk-reducing, not necessarily to be social. We have put in IVR telephone systems (“press 25 to transfer to another pre-recorded call representative”) to lower call costs despite the fact that humans prefer to speak with other humans. We have delegated all communications to the outside world to two classes of individuals: low cost (e.g. call center reps) and high cost (e.g. “communications professionals” and marketers) who serve as proxy communicators on behalf of the organization. Neither of these addresses the challenge of the social web.

This is the challenge.

How does an organization manage the increasing communications asymmetry between inside and outside?

On the inside, information flow is glacial and constricted to a few individuals at the top of the reporting pyramid. On the outside, information flow is kinetic and ubiquitous. Taken within the context and expectations set by the social web most corporations are now structured to be antisocial (communication by proxy) and non-responsive (overwrought workflows governing when/how to respond to issues).

There is no functional method within any organization I know (and I am familiar with quite a few organizations that are trying to tackle this issue) that is effectively handling the following questions:

• How can an organization reasonably (read cost effective and on-brand) be responsive to so many voices that are out there discussing your product or service?
• How do you calibrate your response times to the web where real-time tools like Twitter, Facebook feeds and blogs distribute information instantaneously?
• When and how do you decide to get engaged versus not when issues can literally metastasize overnight?

There are several mutually supporting solutions that need to be put in place and getting there will be a haphazard affair.

First, corporations are not predisposed towards listening (see Listening Beats Talking). We have companies preternaturally tuned towards talking. This is being addressed by the raft of social media consultants out there preaching the holy gospel of listening. Like all behavior changes, this change will come slowly. It will come as a slow market correction – companies that align to this new reality will prosper (think Zappos where customer service is their fundamental marketing plan).

Second, while we have monitoring tools that mine the social web for discussion, we don’t have simple means of connecting our insights into action. There is no “ticketing” system that can provide workflow and audit trail of a customer voice out on the web – and the company outreach that ensues. Another way to say this is that we don’t have any real, proven social CRM solutions. BestBuy has Twelpforce that allows hundreds of BBY employees to respond in semi-coordinated fashion on Twitter. It is a great program and a good start but we have a long way to go.

Now – what does this have to do with the War on Terror? The analogy is more of a footnote to this post but it is an important one and it leads to the third solution needed to meet the challenges listed above.

The U.S. government has approached the The War on Terror  the way a large, industrial corporation would; lay down a heavyweight strategy and marshal all of its resources for a big, resource-intensive push.   Meanwhile the enemy, like the Social Web, in this analogy, exhibits a few key characteristics:

• They are emergent: there is loose direction at the top but most of the action occurs on a cellular, self-directed level
• They are dispersed: geographically Al Qaeda has a confirmed footprint in multiple countries
• They are unknown – These are no longer state actors (in our analogy you might say these are no longer known journalists and “influencers” in the pay of a known corporation that you can negotiate with).  The lowest common denominator is an anonymous well-motivated individual or small group empowered to take a wide variety of actions in pursuit of their goals
• They learn fast, they don’t “play fair” and they are predisposed not to like you

Using a centralized model to meet a decentralized “threat” is a tricky game. The third issue that needs to be solved is that of communications decentralization within large organizations. How do you energize and mobilize your workforce to engage with the outside world? Companies that create a happy, dynamic work culture will have a happy, dynamic workforce capable of carrying the flag in social media (inside and outside the organization). This will allow you to move beyond the limited spokesperson model of today.  To get there companies need to (1) work on a culture of sharing, (2) co-create social media guidelines with their employees and (3) provide training that engages them in thinking innovatively about the potential of these tools and gives them familiarity with the cultural norms of the social web.

Companies that foster a culture of sharing will thrive disproportionate to companies that don’t.  And companies that address the communications asymmetry will be more likely to prosper.

Last week at Web 2.0 Expo Danah Boyd , a well-respected researcher at Microsoft took the stage to deliver a keynote. In most respects the stage was what you would expect: lights, podium, giant slideshow to accompany the talk etc. In one respect the stage was totally different – there was a live, unedited Twitter stream coming from the audience being projected for everyone (except the speaker) to see.

Danah’s talk was difficult – you should read her post on the subject.  She had a rocky start – couldn’t see the audience (lights), couldn’t see the Twitter stream (projected behind her) and the podium made it difficult for her to see her notes. When critical comments began coming through on Twitter it began a downward spiral. The audience laughed at inappropriate moments, throwing Danah off her game.  The audience then fed on her increasing anxiety and so on.

Danah’s post is remarkable in that she makes a painful personal experience even more public in order to foster dialogue on the sort of culture we are creating with social technologies.   Hats off to Danah.   The whole spectacle seems to present a great learning experience for all involved; event organizers, public speakers, audience members.

Architecting a Proper Social Experience
In my opinion (and with the benefit of hindsight of course) the architecture of the experience was bound to create problems. Speaker facing audience but can’t see them. Audience facing speaker and having the ability to project their thoughts onto a screen for everyone except the speaker to see. It doesn’t help relate the speaker’s intent, it doesn’t clarify anything for the audience (presuming they came to listen to the speaker), it makes the false equation that the speaker’s well planned presentation allies well with the spontaneous commentary of the crowd, and ultimately it alienates both parties from each other. I have moderated panels by fielding questions in real time from the audience using Twitter. It worked extremely well because it didn’t divide the panelists’ attention, but it allowed a richer, more diverse set of questions to be posed.   In each case we need to ask ourselves how the technology will serve our communication goals.  Which brings me to the next point…

Thinking the Trend is the End Game
The mistake above is part of a larger mistake that is being made everywhere; embracing a trend without thinking of why you are doing it. In this case the trends are (1) the audience is now part of the conversation and (2) we consume content in smaller, faster bits. These trends are not applicable to every situation. In the case of a large public event where the audience is coming precisely to see a roster of well-known speakers (that is how all conferences do their marketing), there is an inherent and justified asymmetry in the flow of attention. Large audience pays attention to a single speaker.    Just because “the audience now has a voice” doesn’t mean it should be exercised without interruption.  There is still value is prolonged focus, there is still value in the art of the lecture, there is still value in simply listening. In fact I have argued that being able to focus and having a capacity to sit still and listen will be the traits of the next generation of leaders in our staccato-signal world.

The Audience is Responsible
We don’t have much experience with simultaneously being able to be present in a group setting, heard by our peers and yet relatively anonymous to that same group. Previously, if we wanted to raise our hands to say something – we had to pay the price of being identified with the comment or question that we asked. This is why your professor always said, “there are no dumb questions” – to encourage people to accept the price of being identified with a dumb question by reframing the equation. Yes, you have a Twitter handle and someone could look you up… but this doesn’t carry the same stigma as being publicly identified in-the-flesh.

Recently I listened to a Fresh Air interview with Mike Judge, creator of King of the Hill, Beavis and Butthead etc.  In a very thoughtful, funny interview Judge stunned me by saying that he was most proud of Beavis and Butthead. He thought they were cultural archetypes; two un-self-aware do-nothings heaping criticism upon the outside world, while remaining completely oblivious to their own sorry condition. Perhaps it is a bit harsh – but often the Twitterverse allows us to be Buttheads – free to heap scorn upon public figures from the safe, cozy confines of our computers.   As a frequent audience member at conferences I am recommitting to the act of giving my attention and focus on the speakers I have paid to see.

Full Disclosure:  I have worked at O’Reilly Media (co-organizers of the event) and know both Web 2.0 Expo Conference chairs.   I have nothing but respect for how well they do their job and continually push the boundaries regarding how to enhance the event experience.

Here is a link to a transcript of Danah Boyd’s talk.  It is worth paying attention to.

Subscribe to this video podcast via iTunes. Or, you may download the file.

2009 was the year that everything received a “social” prefix; social media, social web, social business and so on. I wanted to ask John Hagel – co-chair of Deloitte’s Center for the Edge – for his take on the significance of the term and its importance for business.
John starts with a great quote, “in many respects we are going back to the future:” the Internet began as a social tool with early bulletin boards that connected small groups with shared interests (mainly academic researchers).  Then the Worldwide Web came along and the population went boom. Millions of people flooded the system to look at basically static content… With the rise of social technologies like blogs, social networks, Twitter etc. we are just now rediscovering the web’s inherently social capabilities.  John goes on to talk about the value of social networks to connect people and surface tacit knowledge and the concept of serendipity on the Social Web.

This is the second in a series of interviews conducted at the Web 2.0 Summit last month.  First interview with John Hagel on the Real Time Web is here.  These interviews originally appeared as part of The Future At Work series.

This is a cross post from Radar:

Kevin Kelly spoke at the Web 2.0 Summit and I ran this interview with him immediately after.

Kevin is a big thinker – focused on the intersection of technology, biology and culture.   His current line of inquiry is around “What Technology Wants.”   That is,  taking technology’s point of view as a method to get a deeper understanding of what technology means in modern life, our relationship to it, and where it is headed.

To Paraphrase Kevin: We are coming into a new territory where the dimensions and possibilities for collaboration have just begun to be explored.  As far as we have come in the roughly 6.500 days since the advent of the Worldwide Web – we are in the early stages of a Cambrian explosion in terms of how social groups interact and get things done.   eBay (one way that auctions work), Wikipedia (one way we collectivize formal knowledge gathering), Digg (one means of using collaborative filtering to delivers news) etc. are all just  beginning to show the methods and means by which we produce information and meaning in a social context.

This interview covers:

• The impact of the web on our recent elections
• The rich new possibilities for interaction and collaboration afforded by the web
• The Wisdom of the Crowds vs. the Stupidity of the Mob
• Technology is the 7th Kingdom of Life… looking into “what technology wants”

This last section (at around 12 minutes) is the deepest and most provocative. Kevin assumes the point of view of technology to assess its needs and wants and this is line of inquiry that leads to some surprising conclusions.