A lot has been said recently about the utopian vs. distopian aspects of the Social Web. You can't watch a media broadcast, attend a dinner party or pass by a bookstore without someone either praising the benefits of our new hyperconnected relationship economy or bemoaning it as the end of civilization.
Frankly, I have become more than a bit bored by the binary nature of these conversations and commentary. Technology isnt good or bad - what we do with it and how we adopt and integrate it into our lives is the challenge. The Social Web is a mere teenager and although many of us may have grown up on the Internet, the Internet is by no means all grown up.
I am looking forward to sharing some of my thoughts and catalyzing a hearty discussion on this topic at SXSW this week. Here is the description of my talk - all snarky and fun for the SXSW zeitgeist. In truth this is less about actual etiquette than about discussing the implications of living in world with emergent socio-normative behaviors. I promise to post my slides and reactions after the show.
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Dear Miss Manners: The Social Web, WTF?
The Social Web is now a teenager –awkward, arrogant, snarky, fearless, experimental and open. She is shaking things up and having a major impact on our culture, social dynamics, and etiquette. What are the new social dynamics and cultural impacts of all these tools and technologies? This session will explore the emerging etiquette issues of our participatory hyper-connected world. What are the new rules? How are our relationships, culture and business assumptions changing? Do we understand the impact of this new relationship persistence?
- Do I have to ask before I post a photo of a friend online? Who has editorial approval?
- Am I required to respond to every inbound communication I receive or is “ignoring” an accepted response?
- Where is the line between encouraging participation and being just plain annoying?
- What are you doing mucking up my activity stream?
- What the heck is a “friend” anyway?
How do we design, build and manage these new spaces? What are the new rules of the online commons and the associated appropriate etiquette? This participatory session will ask attendees to contribute their own real world examples and will lay out a new framework for a new social contract. It’s our job to decide what we want our web teenager to be when she is all grown-up.
If you are attending SXSW please stop in and participate and view the preso here.
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