The impact of digitalisation is increasingly at the level of culture and behaviour and less in the area of new technology. Old customs and traditions experience the threats of technological developments. But traditions, also within media professions, often prove to be stubborn. Also when the influences of technological innovations on human (social) behaviour increasingly clash with those traditions. This was the implicit message behind many keynotes during the #TNW2011 Conference. It was not so much about the Next Web, but about a New Attitude. Innovation with a capital “i”. The 'i' of internal(e) motivation and information.
Anyone who has ever watched an episode of the television series “Rome” can see that people from back then show an eerie amount of similarities with people from today. Of course, we should not project our knowledge in retrospect onto a bygone world, and attribute contemporary characteristics to ancestors from 2000 years ago (as is often done in television and film). At the same time, if we look around us, we can also see that much of the behavior from back then hardly differs from our behavior today. And that it is very plausible that in our hearts we are not really that different from the Romanized Germans of that time.
Man seems to be timeless in his nature. Nowadays we have much more advanced methods and techniques to display our own behavior and to encourage others in their behavior. However, that behavior itself has not changed. Current events remind us daily of the inhuman conditions – still elsewhere in the world – that deserve the label barbaric rather than civilized. This is something to be aware of when we talk about innovation. Because what is really innovating? Man himself ? Are we becoming better as human beings, that is to say more civilized? Or are we only innovating the tools with which we shape our (uncivilized) behavior? What actually drives innovation? What motives are we actually looking for when we want to develop? This was a recurring, implicit question during #TNW2011.
Internet is a tool
After a solid growth in 2009 and 2010, there is currently stabilization in the number of users of social networks. Hyvers are indeed moving to Facebook in large numbers, but that also describes the most important trend in the Netherlands. The growth curve of the social web describes a horizontal line in the Netherlands, with the mobile web at most as an exception to this rule. On that internet, it is all about functionality, relevance and quality. Marja Ruigrok (photo) , of Netpanel, could not make more of it at the start of the second conference day.
The internet is increasingly about other things than about much and more . For example, the word quality bounced around the room regularly during the day, as a successor to quantity . Anyone who works digitally has known for a long time that the challenges on the internet no longer lie in producing as much content as possible or adding as many buttons as possible to software or a media device. The internet is becoming less and less media and more and more a tool. And that is and remains a very fascinating theme in an environment in which media makers traditionally set the tone, but in which the music is increasingly made by people outside those media.
Media-drivenness characterizes recent digital history. David Winer (one of the founders paraguay phone number list of blogging) summarized that history as follows: 'There was a time when I said “everybody should have a blog”… and I was wrong.' Not everyone is a born writer, or even feels like keeping a blog. Yet much innovation in (media) communication was and is(!) driven by the assumption that this is precisely the case. We therefore read more often that 'everyone is a sender' than that this is not the case. In online discussions we read more about how to get CEOs to write on the intranet than about how to best meet the information needs of users. The acceptance within the communications industry that social media is all about interaction seems to change little about professional communications policy and behaviour. These still revolve around the message.
So anyone who listens to or talks to a media person about social media long enough will notice that sooner or later that person is communicating in their own foot.ut #TNW2011, many of the talks were not so much about great media and cutting edge technologies. The convention was not about the Next Apprentice, the trailer of which is already being broadcast on the BBC, with the communicated Thatcherite values from the 1980s-2000s, “get rich at all costs, or be a loser”. No, web innovation is about quality , about improving things , solving problems, about user convenience and interaction . #TNW2011 was largely about attitude, about what motivates innovators in developing information and communication tools.
I draw the lesson from this: More is no longer the challenge. Better is.