It was the cranky old grandpa on The Simpsons who said it best:
"Why, a fax machine is nothing but a waffle iron with a phone attached."
Really, a lot of the "game changing" technologies that we've seen over the last few decades are improvements on things we had seen before. E-mail is a speedier, lightweight version of the same 1:1 written communication that we've known for millennia. One could argue that Paul's letters to the Ephesians, as published in the Bible, were an early form of blogging.
So, what's the big deal about social media? Are we really shifting paradigms and redefining communication, or are we just doing the same old things in faster, shinier ways?
Think of the different ways we spread our ideas to other people. There's 1:1 communication: Two people speaking, listening, and responding to one another. Face to face dialogue, phone calls, letters, e-mail, private chat, Skype calls... all of these are the same fundamental dynamic in which one human being connects to another.
Broadcast conversation is old, too. From cave paintings to books to speeches to TV shows to Youtube clips, the idea of a person standing before a group of people and broadcasting a message isn't new either. One important shift is the opportunity for feedback that social media allows: Suddenly, broadcast communication is two-way. People can (and do) leave comments on videos, ask questions of bloggers, and spark debates about the news articles they read online. In this way, we harken back to the ancient tradition of the oral history - in which the traveling storyteller could hear the audience reaction and refine his narrative as he wandered from place to place.
Where I see the biggest, deepest shift is in many:many communication. These types of connections aren't new; we've all sat around a table or campfire and swapped ideas with a group of people. In an online discussion forum or social network, the conversation stays after the people have left. It doesn't disappear. It doesn't get forgotten or filtered or retold with changes and self-serving edits. You can see the exact words that people used in their lively banter, you can watch an idea unfold, you can watch the exact process that a group followed to solve their problem collaboratively. You can also watch an idea go down the tubes, watch a project fail as if it were a bacterium dying in a petri dish. And not only can you see it - so can everyone else who shares your network.
This openness is at once exciting and startling. It requires some personal and rhetorical skills that don't always come naturally: The willingness to be open, the courage to put your ideas into a public space, the consideration to reply to other people's posts, and the emotional maturity to learn from your own missteps and review your dialogues without censoring.
The benefits of this type of collaboration are innumerable: By opening up many:many communication in a public and shared setting, we can gain a clear and powerful understanding of who we are, how we relate to one another, and what we can do to improve the world or our organization.
Is social media an exciting and powerful way to tap into our collective ideas? Absolutely.
Is it new? Not really.
Monica Wiant
