This is a scheduled post whilst I’m on holiday in the UAE – my apologies if I don’t respond to comments straight away!
“There’s a philosophical tendency in the West, following Plato, to conclude that if a theory isn’t working, there must be something wrong with reality.” (Ikujiro Nonaka and Hirotaka Takeuchi, Harvard Business Review)
An increasingly-prevailing rhetoric of competition has invested western society. ‘Survival of the fittest’ is the dominant mantra: nature as ‘red in tooth and claw’ justifies everything from ultra-competitive school sports days to bankers being paid huge bonuses. Anyone who opposes such an ‘obvious’ state of affairs is seen as naive and, well, a bit… fluffy.
Interestingly, where the real work gets done – on the frontlines (be those military or educational) camaraderie and sharing rules the roost. Why? Because when it comes down to it, we are what we share. Competition, despite what the current government would have us believe, does not ‘drive up standards’ in and of itself: it’s a lazy shorthand for innovation. And if, like me, you believe that co-operation is the best way to bring people together to innovate, then competition is diametrically opposed to this. Everything is not a market.
So the next time you try work out how to boost your Klout score, improve the numbers in that little Feedburner chicklet, or be reshared/retweeted on Google+ or Twitter, just ask yourself: Why am I doing this? Am I doing this to make the world a little bit better than I left it? What and whose theory am I acting on here?
As I mentioned in a previous post, I’ve started to blog occasionally for DMLcentral. My first post has now been published and is available here. 🙂
N.B. I wrote this last night just before Google opened things out via the ability to invite others. I’m posting it as a historical record of my thinking.
I’ve never understood unboxing videos, those rambling, self-glorifying, badly-shot YouTube shorts that literally show somebody taking a gadget out of its box. Whilst I understand the excitement of getting a new piece of tech, I’ve never felt the need to share the unboxing of it with others. Nor, surprisingly, have I been overcome with a desire to watch others do something similar.
Part of the appeal of the unboxing video, presumably, is a glimpse of the previously-unobtainable. For the person doing the unboxing, they get to show the world how lucky they are; the person watching the video gets a caffeine-like hit of anticipation that someday (soon?) they may also be able to get their hands on the shiny-shiny.
In many ways Google+ is like one big and seemingly-neverending unboxing video. There’s the haves frolicking within the magical and enchanted walls whilst the the have-nots try everything they can (purchasing invites on eBay, cajoling friends, begging Google) to get over, under or through to get in. Those enjoying the merry wonderland occasionally post enticing screenshots to the have-nots in spaces that were previously sufficient for social interaction. And just to rub their faces in it, they throw in the occasional link that those without Google+ passes won’t be able to access (“Oh, sorry about that!”)
I’ve been within the walls for a week now. As I explained over at Synechism Ltd. yesterday Google+ is almost there in terms of usefulness. But I’ll stop here before I become one of those annoying people who are equivocal about a space not everyone can access. It’s never about the technology, it’s always about how it’s used – and that’s why we need to get more people in there to start building the same habits, customs and practices we’ve developed together to make Twitter such a useful social tool.
Image CC BY-NC-SA dansays
