If you are in the North-West of England and have nothing to do or, rather, nothing really, really important to do, you may want to drop in for our latest Mobile Monday Manchester edition, which takes place tonight starting at 6pm at the BBC in the brand-spanking new MediaCityUK.
The topic of the night will be “Second Screen” and we will have people from all corners of that: speakers from the Beep itself, companies providing infrastructure and service as well as creative agencies that deliver on these screens.
More info here. To join us, please sign up here (there is only standing room left though…).
Here’s a Confucius quote (which I unearthed via my good friend Jonathan MacDonald):
When you see a man of worth, think of how you may emulate him. When you see one who is unworthy, examine yourself.
And then there was the next chapter in the phone-hacking scandal (cf. here if it really did escape your attention): a newspaper (allegedly) breaking the privacy of an individual – this time amplified by the shocking fact that that individual had actually been murdered at the time of the (hacking) crime. The news brought about harsh reactions, not only from amongst the people but also from venerable bloggers and journalists. There’s even a Facebook Group asking people to boycott the publication.
The outcry bemoaned the failing of technology (hackable) almost as much as the futile attempts to cover the tracks of the wrongdoer.
So what’s new? Nothing!
Technology Facilitates Transparency
I have long been making the case that technology facilitates transparency, and that that is a good thing. I maintain that.
You may have heard the story of the elimination of different pricing for fish around Lake Victoria when the fishermen finally got their hands onto mobile phones, so they could call the merchants at other ports rather than relying on whatever the merchant in their home port told them the price was. Transparency facilitated by technology: win. The above is a fairly straight forward case of the reduction of transaction cost (here: the cost of information) leading to the eradication of previously existing inefficiencies.
There are countless anecdotes (and scientific studies) supporting this notion and providing powerful proof for its validity (which, again, is so simple: reduce the cost of information and you shall harvest).
And then comes someone who uses technology to pervert elementary rights of individuals. And all goes over board. Or does it?
Murdoch is irrelevant
I posit that the latest (as all of the previous) NOTW phone-hacking scandal is not actually turning the above into one big question; it is a mere distortion that has not actually anything to do with the merits: invading someone’s privacy is wrong (NB: whether it’s legal or not is another question). With or without technology. The principle of what constitutes an invasion is usually (there may be exceptions for public figures) dictated from the perspective of the “victim”. Or, in the words of any good anti-harassment memo: If you feel harassed, you are being harassed. If you feel your privacy is invaded, it is invaded.
However, the act as well as the debate following it highlight one crucial piece that is often overlooked. And it has nothing to do with neither the technology nor the morality of those using technology to breach laws, rights, feelings. It has to do with orientation.
Transparency Reduces Friction; It Does Replace Neither Judgment Nor Ethics!
Be it Wikileaks, Murdoch’s papers’ conduct or super-injunctions (and their factual lift by the freedom of speech in the Commons), transparency facilitated by technology (as the main tool to reduce cost of balanced information to meaningful levels for each [connected] individual) is merely a tool, albeit a very, very powerful one. It aids the exposure of partisan interests and hence helps eradicate inefficiencies (partisan interests almost always add cost). And it works: apparently advertisers review their ads in Murdoch papers (cf. here).
BUT it does not replace good judgment or makes a call on the ethics of an action or inaction. This is why I called it an issue of orientation. People are – perhaps more than ever – required to judge and apply ethical standards to the information they receive.
This means that every single on of us is required to query, ask, debate; no easy answers anymore. This makes the world a better but also an inherently more complicated place. And it makes it even more prone to manipulation (arguably the reason why some try it on…) since the imbalance of access to information (i.e. the anti-thema to transparency) provides a lever to uproot that newly won freedom. If, however, every single one of us applies the beliefs and convictions we know to be true (and, yes, your truth may be different to mine), and keep the lines open, I firmly believe that discourse will guide us to a result that is “right”. But you have to have the guts and courage to apply your own thoughts, query those arguments and render judgment – for as long as you are not presented with a better case.
Technology is the Great Equaliser
Access to information is the biggest asset in an information economy. Technology aids this. And mobile is the single biggest medium in the history of mankind to facilitate this. I can provide you with tons of examples (but I reckon it is probably undisputed).
Technology also enables every single one of us to use it in order to get to sound judgment, to debate, ponder and ultimately assess of what we deem ethical. It puts all of us into the drivers seat of opinion-forming, which is something that has never been there before. There had always been powerful intermediaries (the media in its various forms through the centuries; market criers, preachers, scribes, authors, newspaper editors, radio and TV producers all had the cost of dissemination of information on their side: it was inconceivable that anyone from outside these circles could invade and publicly query. Now we can. But: we also have to! If we choose to stay silent, we should not bemoan that others form and disseminate the opinions we believe to be wrong.
Confucius is still right. Technology does not allow you to be an immoral, unethical knobhead. And, no, no one said it was easy!
Namaste!
Yesterday, I had the pleasure of delivering a talk at the Social Gaming Summit in London (which was fun even though it was at Chelsea FC…). Given that the audience was fairly clued up on all things social, I was focusing a little more on the mobile side of things – highlighting market sizes, roll-out speeds and platform risks (and opportunities!).
Here’s the deck, I hope you enjoy it:
It is this time of the year where people start looking forward (and back) and come up with clever analyses of things we have always known and those that we haven’t. And because Europe has always (?) been the thoughtful and fashionably skeptic part of the world, it is that one of the leading newspapers, the Guardian, posts an article querying, gosh, Twitter. The link actually contains the words
trouble-twitter-social-networking-banality
The proof? Iran is still not free (or so most of us Westeners think) and only 0.027% of Iranians use Twitter. There you have it. It concludes that it is all narcissistic navel-gazing. The comments, alas, are a delight to read… 
Where are we then? Is this true? It is – you may have guessed that this be my stance – not. And here’s why:
Social media (Twitter included) is nothing in itself, it merely defines a group of tools. Therefore, it is not the emperor’s new clothes, it is – if anything – the emperor’s new herald: if the emperor has nothing new, interesting, noteworthy to tell, it will remain as dull and meaningless as before but social tools actually allow you to filter, to focus, to spread noteworthy, sensible and truly good stuff to a group of people that is much larger than you could have reached before at a cost that is (per capita and in toto) much lower than before. And that means it is one cool tool!
There are a gazillion reasons to dismiss Twitter (or Facebook – although fewer people seem to do just that these days) on the basis of boring info about breakfast/lunch/supper/traffic jam on way home or to hype it up on the basis of opposition in Iran/arrests in Egypt/tsunamis in Thailand or a mere plane landing on the Hudson. The argument fails both ways. It is not that. It is the fact that it is possible to communicate at nigh zero costs with people that may be interested – and it is upon the people to find you but it is also upon you to find the interesting bits!
I am already slightly tired to refer to Clay Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody who provides us with some beautiful examples of this but the point is (and here Shirky’s academic background serves him really well): it is a tool, and a tool makes only sense (or nonsense) in the hand of its user. So here’s to everyone who complains about useless and redundant info over Twitter: choose better who you follow; you would not stick around some dinner party endlessly discussing the virtues of starching napkins either, would you?
As with every tool (say, a hammer), social tools are more useful, the easier and intuitive they are to use. If it is self-explanatory on how to extract something positive (e.g. to get that bloody nail into that bloody board), the better (and if you can do it without walking away with a bloody thumb, even better). At the moment, many people walk away from Twitter because of a bloody thumb. But would you dismiss a hammer only because you hit yourself? Probably not. Unless you find a better hammer of course…
Finally (and because I called this blog “on mobile”), here’s why the combination of social tools with this other tool in everyone’s hands, namely the mobile phone, is so powerful:
- Daily circulation of newspapers worldwide: 450,000,000
- Number of TV sets in use worldwide: 1,500,000,000
- Number of Internet users worldwide: 1,600,000,000
- Number of credit cards worldwide: 1,700,000,000
- Number of toothbrushes in use worldwide: 2,250,000,000
- Number of mobile subscriptions worldwide: 4,600,000,000.
Have a great 2010!
Cartoon credit: Hugh MacLeod (http://gapingvoid.com/)
