Well the second "philosophy of social media" (#philsocial) lecture turned out to be even more enlightening and inspiring than the first as we were taken on a whirlwind tour of the (mainly) Californian Counter culture of the latter half of the 20th century. Hippies, the hacker movement, the early days of the personal computer industry and finally the conception of the Internet were all delved into as we explored not the philosophy of but the history of social media. Where did it come from?
It is an enthralling and intertwining journey beginning with the likes of Jack Kerouac and Gilles Deleuze traveling via Richard Stallman, Tim Berners-Lee and Linus Torvald. Along the way, we visited intrigueing movements like the HomeBrew Computer Club (which - who knew - prodoced both Bill Gates AND Steve Jobs), the Community Memory Project and The WELL, Stewart Brand's Whole Earth Catalog. These were all celebrated in a thesis which suggested that Social Media is not a technology but a culture, and its genesis lies in the same 60s Counter Culture that gave us Woodstock, The Peace Movement and Civil Rights.
The words of the 1974 People's Computer Company perhaps best summed up the spirit of the age and how it applied to the revolutionary innovations that were taking place in technology at the time:
"Computers are mostly used against people instead of for people; used to control people instead of to free them; Time to change all that - we need a... People's Computer Company."
But as groovy as all this was, I took away in particular something exremely valueable amid my need as a PR professional to understand how this new cultural phenemenon is impacting the organisation. That was the inherently disruptive DNA within social media given it's routes so deep in the "turn on, tune in, drop out" scene, the Free Open Source Software Movement (FOSS) and Hacker Culture. As organizations seek to adapt to and work with it, to attempt to do so with, as Marc Benioff said, a "command and control" mentality is to underwrite those efforts - internally as well as externally - with failure. How can you seek to involve yourself in something so anarchic and non-conformist by expecting people to conform and to comply. It can't succeed.
Echoing last week's thoughts on communalism, Mr Rayner again stressed the emphasis of sharing and freedom of information so deep in the spirit of social media - embedded in the Free Software Movement and the Hippie culture of non-ownership. So when you see the hell that befalls companies like Qantas trying to placate people with a Twitter competition in the middle of a strike (#qantasluxury); or Vodafone trying to ignore a groundswell of rebellion amid massive network failure (#vodafail); or more recently Channel 7 attempt to quell a viewer-rebellion by simply deleting someone's Facebook post, you understand why they fail so badly. It doesn't work because - as I now understand - social media is endemically revolutionary and should be respected as such. Users are empowered and all-powerful, they are contrary and non-compliant. In the words of The Prisoner: "I am not a number, I am a free man".
Organisations now have to collaborate with and listen to these social networks; attempts to control them will fail. Anyone in any doubt as to the revolutionary and insurgent power of social media - the latest child of the 60s Counter Culture revolution - need only think of its role in the Arab Spring to get the picture, man.