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February 26, 2013 in Change, Social Media 10 Comments

The Dark Side of the Revolution

I spent yesterday at a fabulous conference–xPotomac (formerly Blog Potomac), which focuses on social media and new technologies for mostly marketing and PR folks. It was a great event: limited in number of attendees, with speakers who spent as much time doing Q&A with the audience as they did speaking. We talked about the power of images, augmented reality (and how it’s not science fiction any more), and the importance of context and influence versus social “rankings.” The speakers were all in the audience, and, frankly, most of the audience were people who usually were speakers at conferences. This was a really smart group, and the quality of the conversation all day reflected that fact clearly.

The closing keynote was given by Andrew Keen. In his twitter bio, he declares himself the “antichrist of Silicon Valley.” I haven’t read his books, but I’ve encountered his basic messages in articles and now this keynote. Social media is a big problem according to Keen. It dilutes the quality of professional work by giving amateurs a bigger voice, and it supports our overall narcissism by pushing us to always be selling ourselves. He feels we have developed a society of “weak individuals” as a result.

His arguments were generally not well received in this crowd (or with me, for that matter). Nor was his condescending and rather insulting treatment of individuals in the room (this is apparently part of his shtick, though it had me thinking of a different book that has nothing to do with social media–The No Asshole Rule, by Bob Sutton; conference organizers take note).

But there was one point from his talk that stuck with me, and I think it’s important. Keen’s arguments have been described as dystopian–that the world is going to heck in a handbasket because of this social media thing. We all stay in our little social media bubbles, where we hang out only with people who are just like us and don’t ever get to know our neighbors, and this leads to the tearing of the fabric of society, etc. Someone asked him if he had a more utopian alternative (if that’s even possible for a dystopian!). His response was important (and I’m paraphrasing here):

If we had been sitting here in the 1860s or 1870s warning people about the dangerous environmental effects of the industrial revolution we would have been pushed off to the side as misguided lunatics. The industrial revolution was going to feed our people, increase standard of living, and solve major world problems. How could you be against it? Of course it had some very negative effects–that we are living with today–and throughout history we have certainly responded to those issues at one level or another.

But the point I took away is that every revolution has a dark side. The positive changes of a revolution are alluring, and we all want to spend time talking about that. It’s such a great relief to be talking about those positive changes, particularly if you’re fed up with the status quo. But it is very important to see past those positive effects to the potential negatives. All systems have positives and negatives. We all have a dark side. Yin and yang. The more we are aware of it, the better we deal with it. It’s not about going back to the status quo. But it is about understanding what the real implications are about a substantial loss of privacy society-wide.

One of the speakers was a futurist. He got a big laugh with is line “What do you call someone who predicts the future? A crackpot.” Futurists are not about narrowing down to one predicted future. They are about understanding a range of plausible scenarios that can guide our current decision making. We need to explore in detail some of these negative scenarios so we are prepared to deal with the dark side of the revolution as we move forward.

If you read my blog regularly, you know I’m a fan of the social media revolution. Humanize is all about that as well. I think the way it has democratized things is good. I think opening up access to the “amateurs” has vastly expanded our knowledge and our possibilities. I think open and trustworthy and transparent are better than the world of elite experts running the show behind the curtain. But if we fall into the trap of “well this is just the direction the technology is taking us, so we’d better get used to it,” we’ll be doing ourselves a disservice. Let’s keep our eye on the dark side and continue to talk about it. But, for the record, let’s not insult each other while we’re doing it.

image credit

10 Comments

  1. Sarah
    26.02.2013 at 10:40 am

    #1, I am totally jealous you had that conference. Makes me homesick for Virginia (or possibly want to take over the social media world down here in Atlanta)

    #2, It sounds like he was dead on about some of the issues going on with social media. I can say that I definitely feel more connected with some people I’ve never met than my own neighbors. But I don’t think it’s necessarily on par with some other revolutions. Perhaps it’s the passive nature of our modern society (going to war but not actually declaring war, declaring war on drugs but not really fighting them, etc) but I really can’t say that I would compare social media, which is here to stay but made up of some pretty flaky parts, to huge social, industrial, and political movements that changed the face of our nation.

    I don’t know. Maybe it’s just because I am inside this movement, and have only studied others after the fact. 🙂

    Congratulations, you inspired my random rambling comment of the day! Love your blog!

  2. Robert Barnes
    26.02.2013 at 6:02 pm

    Richard Branson talks about his process of business model innovation always including significant discussions about “protecting the downside”. This speaks to Jeff De Cagna’s premise also that scenario planning is far better than strategic planning. Forecasting plausible future scenarios is a great exercise. It is the IFTTT approach – ‘if this, then that’ which has to include the downside and if the downside can be protected against, or minimised, then the benefits will continue to outweigh the downside and prosperity should be the predominant experience of everyone who participated in the process. Great post.

  5. Geoff Livingston
    27.02.2013 at 8:15 pm

    I think this is a really good post. You are right, we always want to pick apart the bad, but in reality there is a dark side, a tao-ist element that we also need to consider.

    Keen was provocative, inciting angst, but definitely shook us all up. Thanks for coming, Jaime. I’m sorry we didn’t get a change to chat at the event.

    • Jamie Notter
      27.02.2013 at 9:23 pm

      Thanks Geoff. The conference was really awesome. You guys did a fabulous job.

  7. 10 Good Things | Geoff Livingston's Blog
    01.03.2013 at 7:00 am

    […] and I successfully rebooted the BlogPotomac franchise as xPotomac on Monday. The feedback has been provocative, and indicative of a repeatable conference. We will meet later this month to conduct a post mortem and […]

  9. Marije van den Berg
    04.03.2013 at 11:28 am

    I had a lot of conversations about the transitions we are going through; this posts adds insight to that, thanks.

    Two things I have picked up last week may be of help if we want to take the discussion about “bright and dark sides” a bit further.

    The first is the image of *the lemniscate*. In Humanize you emphasize the importance of conversation for learning. The man I talked to last week (about the future of communication professionals in government, in the Netherlands btw) drew me the image of the lemniscate to express the need for “going back and forth”. On every level. Between old and new, tradition and innovation, ‘power’ and connection, inside and outside institutions.

    That image helps me to start up conversations, and it can also help to bring together the yin and yang and not stay put in our own individual views on things.

    There are no quick fixes. The other insight I got was: *we have to endure the dilemma’s* (or do you say: bear the dilemma’s, my Dutch is better than my English :)). We have to accept that not all things can have a simple solution. Enduring the dilemma’s, not looking for quick fixes, keep conversation open and keep on working 🙂 That also gives the depth of discussion Keen lacks.

    We will get there. And Andrew Keen will love it there too 🙂