Bernie Michalik's posterous site

In Cape Breton, where I am from, you put a dozen people in the same room
and what happens is that multiple conversations start at once, so that
there can be up to 6! conversations happening at roughly the same time.
Most of the time, it is less than this, of course, but it is a very intense
form of communicating, and it is rare for 11 people to be listening to 1
person, and it is also unlikely that there is 6 1-1 chats happening either.
2 to 3 conversations might be occurring, and people will join one or
another or start a new one along the way. It is very unlike conversations
in Toronto, where people take turns talking. Indeed, it takes me time to
get used to it again when I return there. I am usually overwhelmed the
first time I go there, like an out of shape athlete trying to rejoin his
teammates.

Email and older form of communication are much like conversations in
Toronto, for the most part: one person talks and the other listen. I send
you an email (talking), you read it (listening), then respond (talking).

Social media is more like Cape Breton. Everyone is talking at the same
time! Everyone is saying: here's where I am, here's my status, here's my
photos, here's my thoughts written in a blog post. I am listening to all
these threads, and I reply, comment, "like" them, and from there
conversations, albeit often brief ones, occur. And just like in Cape
Breton, other people pick up on the comments and add their comments, and
the whole thing may spin off and take on a life of it's own.

When I read criticisms about social media -- the latest is by Malcolm
Gladwell -- I often think they are seizing on the obvious and missing out
on the deeper and more fundamental change that is occurring. Social media
and other new media are not some formulae whereby we add it and voila, new
results occur (although that may happen). What I think is interesting
about social media is how it is changing the way we communicate as to make
it more amplified and more intensified. I think too many people focus on
the limitations of Twitter or Facebook or other social media and say: look
at all the short comings. I look at them and say: this is only the start of
how we can exchange information with many people at the same time and have
them exchange it in other ways that will have effects that we can't even
imagine, and that is only going to increase and accelerate as the
technology gets better and the amount of people who adopt the technology
becomes greater. The conversations will become more like those I have in
Cape Breton, where you learn and exchange more in an hour than you would in
a days worth of talk elsewhere. It is the future of communication. THAT, to
me, is what is exciting - and tiring! - about social media. It is the
amplification and intensification of online communication.

But Gladwell and his supporters are missing something more direct as well.
For while I don't think my changing my avatar green is going to necessarily
improve things for the people in Iran, just like I might vote in an
election where my vote is just one of millions, I think that pushing ever
so small in one direction can result in big changes. And I don't know if
blogging about the efforts of Medicins Sans Frontiers' efforts in Haiti
after the earthquake resulted in anything, but the chance that it did made
it worthwhile to do so. All the small communications can accumulate and
knock down barriers, just like the constant rain on rock wears it away. And
small waves that resonate can magnify and sweep away barriers that would
otherwise thwart them. It is not the only thing worth doing, and it may not
be the best thing to do, but that does not mean it is worthless to do so,
which is often implicit or explicit in the critique of Gladwell and
company.

In the 70s and 80s, computer visualization was fairly primitive. (Rewatch
Blade Runner, Star Wars or Alien and you'll see.) Any fool could have said:
that's not what things look like! Computers fail! I sometimes feel like
that again when I hear some of these current criticisms of social media.

Thanks for taking the time to read this.
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Sent from my BlackBerry Handheld.