Back in 2007 I started writing a post called “Can a Lone Blogger be ever Heard?” everybody was writing on the web, blogs were springing up all over the place and bloggers, from passionate enthusiasts to savvy marketers and Black Hat SEO operators were filling the web with content. I never finished that post because I got depressed. Looking at the state of play, back then it seemed unlikely that a lone blogger would ever surface enough to do anything on the web.
In boxing, where the margin for error is razor-thin, there is a way to describe anyone who simply looks at an opponent and plans to take him on his strengths with equal strengths. It’s called “cruising for a bruising”. It suggests the match will be spectacularly painful and probably one-sided.
If you’re feeling a quickening every time you look at the web. If you sense new opportunities but can’t quite put your finger on what they are. If there is a feeling that things are changing but you’re not yet 100% how then you’re not the only one.
They say art imitates life but the truth is that life more often than not imitates art only one better. Locked in a self-imposed silo of academic research as a I was writing my book on semantic search I used the example of an imaginary bakery that would use the social web and semantic search and video to get itself out of a rut and promote its product.
“The real world just doesn’t offer up as easily the carefully designed pleasures, the thrilling challenges, and the powerful social bonding afforded by virtual environments. Reality doesn’t motivate us as effectively. Reality isn’t engineered to maximize our potential. Reality wasn’t designed from the bottom up to make us happy.” says game designer, Jane McGonigal in her book Reality is Broken.
Every time we interact online we enter into a relational exchange. Whether we part with time, money or information we end up giving something and taking something back. In a straightforward commercial transaction, where we purchase something the mechanism is obvious: we give money and we buy stuff. But when there is no commercial transaction taking place, obvious or otherwise, the relationship and its dynamics become harder to fathom, the notion of ‘free’ as in time, effort, knowledge and goodwill, is hard to get one’s head round.
Social media tools like Twitter, Facebook and Google+ are the instruments which, in a hyperconnected world, create a reality that is independent of the perceived, managed and projected image most ruling parties across the globe, would want us to have.
In the digital world there is no action without a reaction, no cause without effect. It is a truly fractal world where chaos dynamics (popularly known as the Butterfly Effect) are the norm.
Propaganda was given a bad name precisely because it was effective and manipulated people’s thoughts and opinions through the heavily slanted presentation of information. While frequently it appears to be informative and neutral it is cleverly crafted to touch upon commonly held views and resentments and create emotional flashpoints which spiral out of control. The result is always incendiary. It produces a strong reaction, feeds biases and creates a totally one-sided argument while appearing to do the exact opposite.
In 1985 when Ender’s Game was first published the world was a different place. We were each locked into the confines of our own skulls, our thoughts entirely our own, our opinions and ideas shared only with the closest of our friends, our self-expression circumscribed.
