Networked information society: what it means for your business

My blog posting activity has been on the light side recently. This posting marks the return of more regular postings.

Wealth of networks

If you have not yet read The Wealth of Networks by Yochai Benkler, can I recommend that you do. The main theme of the book – that the networked information society creates social value – is at once a great challenge for the 21 century, and is also one of the great opportunities.

It’s challenging to those that hold dearly on to the main elements of 20th century market economies: exclusivity, wealth measured in monetary terms, the organisational power of the firm, the nation state, consumerism and the media. The networked information society is challenging to accountants, economists and management consultancies, the rationale of all being bound by the main elements of market economies.

Information is not scarce. Knowledge is not bound by centralised control. Indeed, the value of knowledge and information grows with sharing. Networked social value is not exclusive property. Not only is it possible for people to be well-organised in networked relationships online, it is actually very easy – and adaptive and resilient too. The value of networks transcends organisational and jurisdictional boundaries. Can you put any of that on a balance sheet – or confine it to a national identity? Hell no!

The networked information society creates social value through connections between people. Social value is created through shared creativity, expression and reputation. In The Internet and the Project of Communications Law, Susan Crawford described it this way. “…the greatest possible diversity of new ideas that will support our country in the future will come from the online world, because of its special affordances of interactivity, interconnectivity, and unpredictable evolution” (page 6). Written in 2007, don’t those words seem that much more important in the global economic meltdown. Oh, and while referencing Susan Crawford, another take-away from her piece is: don’t treat the internet like a content-delivery supply chain. It’s greatest value is in human connections and relationships online.

Implications for the firm and other institutions: it’s about relationships, not things

Get networked! Participate and engage with your customers, stakeholders, citizens, people everywhere. Get to know them better. Anticipate their needs. If you have something of value to them, go directly to them. Avoid intermediaries.  Invite them to know you better. Collaborate with them. People are influenced by those they know about and trust. Share to grow. Use others data and platforms where you can.

Reach out and use the scale of the internet to go beyond your town, your region, your country.

Use mulitmedia. People are more passionate, more emotional with video interaction. There is far richer connectivity. Tell stories about you, your service or product.

Mind over Matter

On 26 August I had the great good fortune to attend the Mind over Matter – How Technology Matters seminar hosted by education.au.

Professor Martin Westell’s topic was how technology is impacting on attention, motivation, multi-tasking, learning and work. This posting is to share my notes on multi-tasking, media consumption, evidence-based decision-making, the pace of change looking forward and ways to deal with that. The speech marks are quotes from Prof. Westell.

Multi-tasking

One surprise for me was to learn that young people are not so good at multi-tasking (e.g. consuming multiple media at the same time). It was surprising in that, a not unusual comment at media conferences  is for one of the speakers to talk about their son or daughter’s ability to watch TV, txt friends and update their MySpace/Bebo or Facebook profile all at the same time. As it turns out, that all seems to be something of a myth. Adults in are not so adept at multi-tasking either,but they are better at it than young people. It seems that what people do is to shift their attention from one task to another. So a young person would send an SMS, then check out YouTube, then turn to whatever is on TV – sequentially, not simultaneously. Media consumption is episodic. Check out the research referred to by Prof. Westell here.

The relationship between multi-tasking and media consumption appears at first to be at odds with recent data about people consuming more media at the same time. The point to note however, as Ross Dawson as observed, the implications are that “Most media will be consumed with partial attention. Advertising impact will decrease”.

The point about ‘partial attention’ is consistent with the ’scarcity of attention’ phenomenon as observed by Brian Solis.

Adults are better at multi-tasking because they have more highly developed ‘executive functions’ (such as inhibiting impulses and paying attention). Younger people do not have the same attention-holding ability as adults – that probably explains why kids appear to be consuming multiple media at the same time. They just flip quickly from one to another.

On the Impact of ICT

It is important for the ’system’ (i.e educational institutions, service providers, regulators) to understand – at a reasonably deep, rather than surface level – what ICT experiences students have. Where there is a lack of understanding “the system retreats” (eg. where schools ban access to YouTube and social networking sites).

Young people are better at discerning authentic & synthetic messages (eg. after MySpace introduced advertising, some young people left the service).

Socialisation (not information) is now the primary use of the Internet. “It’s not the technology that changes the way you think, it’s about you and what you do with it”.

Young people experience violence online in a similar way to real violence (ie. their brain reactions are similar).  A young person experiencing a lot of violence online becomes more violent in the real world. Their online experience changes their worldview and interaction with others in the real-world. This can have positive effects as well, depending on the virtual experience. Online video game players apparently make better laproscopic surgeons. Learning how to take-in massive amounts of information during video games develops a high capacity for attention.

ICT is process-focused rather than product-focused. Demonstratively high processing skills is a key indicator of future success – more so than numeracy skills. The best time to learn processing skills is between 7 – 15 years of age. Happily, learning changes brain connectivity through-out life (ie. it is possible to learn no matter what age you are).

Highly structured learning environments that focus on content inhibits skills-building to an extent (skills such as planning, strategising and prioritisation). More effective learning environments incorporate multi-sensory activity, emotional content and interpersonal interaction. ICT collaborative tools are good for building self-regulatory or ‘executive’ functions. Giving more control to young people over their education would help to develop their self-regulatory skills.

Evidence

We can only use evidence to inform decision-making (ie. evidence is not the sole basis on which to make decisions). Each decision-maker has their own beliefs, experiences and values that come into play.

Forward-looking

Prof Westell referred to Kurzweil’s Singularity is Near to suggest that, at the current rate of progress, the next 25 years will be the equivalent of progress made over the last 100 years. In such an environment – with so much change, so much diversity – a distinctive ‘Generation Z’ (i.e the generation after Gen Y) is not likely to happen. In an environment of rapid change, ‘future-proofing skills’ such as creativity and innovation will be of strategic advantage.

Decision-making will involve ambiguity – making decisions with unknown probabilities or unknown outcomes. This means that decision-making would need to be open to possibilities. This is different to making decisions through risk-assessments (evaluating varying levels of probability).

The problem is that people prefer knowns to unknowns, going so far as to sacrifice potential rewards for the sake of surety. Our natural response to ambiguity inhibits innovation and leadership. Apparently ‘neuro-economics’ goes into this kind of thing (ie. ways of getting around this problem).

Professor Westell referred us to a presentation by Ken Robinson on creativity  – one of the messages being that creativity is just as important as literacy skills. Creativity means being open to possibilities, doing new things. According to Sir Ken, “if you are not prepared to be wrong, you will never come-up with anything original”.

On top of the need for ‘the system’ to understand young people’s use of ICT, other challenges are to cope with complexity (fast pace of change), ambiguity and to embrace creativity.

From linear thought back to networked thought

I linked back to a February 08 posting by Scot Karp this morning and it really got me thinking. Scot’s message was that traditional media is linear – the content is pushed at you and your focus is on that - while web content is networked and interactive – content is dynamic and participatory and your focus is whatever you choose.

In my view, Scot’s observation is more powerful than he described. Content pushed at you is what happens in traditional education services, conferences and seminars. How many times have I been bored with listening to ‘experts on panels’! Sharing and creating knowledge is so much richer during creative conversations compared to lectures and reading books. As a strategist, I am continually frustrated with meetings and communication that are linear.

The internet is changing that paradigm. Spending time in the blogosphere is a delight – I can link to this or that depending on prompts that I experience, or the pattern-forming/ideas/imagining going on in my head.

Sure, I read books too – but i usually have three for four books going at a time. Generally I do not like to be limited by one storey or theme at a time.

Also, how long have books and newspapers been around? There is a comment from Cheryl on Scot’s posting, that “Before reading, people networked to obtain and validate information”.  I suspect that form of learding still applies largely for many people. So in that sense, networked thought is not evolutionary – it’s the way people are hard-wired to think.

Sure the printing press was revolutionary in terms of distributing information and empowering people. But the internet revolution offers more opportunities for creative thinking and sharing knowledge.

As I read Scot’s posting I recalled getting excited about Goofy2, a web service that makes it easy for users to share thoughts. I read about this on the China Web2.0 Review blog. Kashgar, one of G2’s co-founders, commented that:

“An idea on G2 is like a seed that sprouts, grows and finally flourishes into a tree, then a jungle. When an idea is posted, unlimited number of comments can be followed. When a discussion never ends and a large number of users can tag and save interesting stuff along the way. Magic happens, when people are talking freely and pick up goodies (saving and tagging) along the way, it creates some kind of mob-intelligence: People actually think together.”

I’m going like ‘yeah baby’! – and said as much in my comment to the China Web2.0 posting. Seems to me that G2 is tapping right into networked thought.