Category: Four pillars

Gideon Rachman, who’s been blogging over at ft.com for about a year now, wrote a fascinating little teaser on why he loves Wikipedia. While commenting on the “big division of opinion between people from the rich world and from the developing world”, Gideon states:

But people from Europe and the US were often  more inclined to “Keenian gloom”. They talked about the spread of pornography, gambling, cults — and the destruction of the business models of traditional media and with that the collapse of vital sources of authoritative information”.

I find that fascinating. An avenue that I hadn’t considered deeply enough. There are so many nuances I experience when I read that sentence of Gideon’s. I start wondering whether “western” use of the web for pornography and gambling is really about cultural decadence rather than the availability and proximity I had assumed. I start wondering whether the developing world’s enterprises will derive value from Enterprise 2.0 and social software much earlier than their developed world counterparts, a legacy effect I hadn’t considered before. I start wondering whether the developing world will leapfrog the developed world in the use of social software in general, as they are appearing to do in the mobile and wireless contexts. I start wondering.

That’s why I like being Confused. Thank you Gideon.

An aside. You may have noticed I have carefully avoided linking to anything on or by Mr Keen. I don’t do link-whores.

In today’s print edition of the Financial Times, David Bolchover averred that The self-employed are too busy to go surfing; commenting on the TUC criticism of blocking access to social networking sites, he meanders through the graveyard of worker apathy and ends with the assertion that “you will not find the self-employed immersed on Facebook for hours. The perception of working is irrelevant to them. They are paid for being productive, not for turning up”.

I think he’s managed to miss the point, spectacularly, while coming very close to it.

I agree with him that self-employed people are unlikely to be found “immersed on Facebook for hours”. But why single out self-employed people? This is true for other employed people as well, and probably for students and even for the unemployed. All this talk of immersion is so much hokum, I feel like taking a leaf out of Stephen Smoliar’s book and asking for “hard data”. My hard data is based on the self-employed people I know, who use Facebook without getting immersed or obsessive about it. My hard data is based on my kids and their friends. My hard data is based on watching my colleagues.

I agree as well with Bolchover’s assertion that “the perception of working is irrelevant to [the self-employed],” and that “they are paid for being productive, not for turning up”.  But again why this belief that outcome-driven people must be self-employed? Sure, I’ve seen my fair share of furniture and time-servers in my time, but there are many talented people around. Many whose work ethic is based on results rather than effort, yet without sacrificing their values and their beliefs.

Everyone should be paid for being productive, not for turning up. That’s the whole point. Nothing to do with being self-employed or not, it’s a question of treating the company’s time as if it were your own. Even if you are self-employed.

Being connected is important. Being connected, not channelled, is more important. Being connected, not channelled, supported by appropriate tools, is even more important.

Don’t get my drift? Go read Dave The LifeKludger’s most recent post, Isolation Kills. Speaking from personal experience, he makes a far better case for the use of social software than I ever could, as he describes the important of access as an antidote to isolation.

My thanks to Dave.

This is what some captain of industry is meant to have said when asked if he used Facebook.

I must be getting old. I’ve heard this precise phrase twice before. The first time, it was in the mid 1980s and the question was about PCs. The next time around, it was in the early 1990s and the question was about e-mail.

Would you like to bet against social networks becoming as normal and ubiquitous and “essential” as the PC and e-mail? Your call.

You may not think Facebook is the answer. Fair enough. But please think hard before you dismiss anything that represents the following:

• a large and growing community, albeit virtual
• one that empowers people
• one that allows those people to form and re-form groups and subgroups at will
• one that facilitates conversation between those people while keeping them informed

The last point, about the Siamese-Twin communications nature of stuff like Facebook, is something I need to think harder about. I think something special happens when you can converse and be kept informed at the same time. That’s what Bloomberg discovered.

My thanks to Usable Interfaces for reminding me of the FT article and the closing line. I’d seen it and then forgotten about it. These things happen.

Have you ever heard of TechSoup.org? They describe themselves as:

Powered by CompuMentor, one of the nation’s oldest and largest nonprofit technology assistance agencies, TechSoup.org offers nonprofits a one-stop resource for technology needs by providing free information, resources, and support. In addition to online information and resources, we offer a product philanthropy service called TechSoup Stock. Here, nonprofits can access donated and discounted technology products, generously provided by corporate and nonprofit technology partners.

We believe that technology can enhance nonprofit work, making us more efficient and better able to serve our communities. We never lose sight of that goal.

CompuMentor itself was founded about twenty years ago, as a result of a guy called Daniel Ben-Horin finding out what made The WELL tick, and wanting to be a part of that something. Everything I’ve read about the WELL makes them the real pioneers of virtual communities, so this is some pedigree.

But that’s all background. Can’t remember where I read it, but what I do remember is what the article said…..  TechSoup (or some part of it) was making virtual office space and equipment available, at no cost, to qualifying charities that wanted to set up in Second Life.

What fascinated me and made my heart sing was the nature of the charity that seemed to trigger TechSoup into doing this; the article spoke of a particular eureka moment for someone from TechSoup, coming across a meeting of real-life quadriplegics in the virtual environment.

The point was that the quadriplegics could do so much in the virtual world that they couldn’t do in “real” life; walk, run, even fly.

I think this is an absolutely fundamental point: virtual worlds allow people to do things they are disenfranchised from doing in the real world. 

Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that this capacity to enfranchise is restricted to Second Life and similar environments; it is as meaningful in apparently non-graphic environments like Facebook. The enfranchisement is based on the virtual nature of the environment and not on the graphics.

So before you decide to ban Second Life and Facebook and stuff like that from the work environment, think about the disenfranchised. How could you use virtual environments to lower enterprise barriers to entry for the disenfranchised? What happens when you can place-shift? What happens when you can gather people into virtual meetings? What happens when you can provide alternate means of communications to those hard of hearing, hard of speech, or, for that matter, wheelchair-dependent?

You see, what intrigues me is the level playing field. There are many ways to aid people who are disenfranchised in one way or the other, and we have many fantastic technologically-advanced devices to offer those who are otherwise handicapped. Yet, when it comes to a virtual meeting, some of the social aspects of the disenfranchisement become invisible.

We live in a world where many people pay serious money for changing, repairing or otherwise “improving” some aspect of their physical appearance. Let us take the beams out of our own eyes before we take the motes out of others’.  Who are we to deny someone the right to “change” their body (as they would be able to do in Second Life) or “dematerialise it” (as they can do in Facebook?). What do we understand about how the behaviours (and productivity) of the otherwise disadvantaged would change as a result?

I don’t know enough about all this, but I will continue to learn. It’s too easy to say “waste of time” and “nothing to do with work” and “it’s all about sex, drugs and rock-n-roll anyway”.  I want to find out more about the people who see these tools as opportunities to develop and enhance their potential, as opportunities to deliver to that increased level of potential. And I want to find ways of helping people do this. Which means I must continue to experiment with such tools.