Define communicate. A dictionary will tell you it's the act of transmitting information.
Historically, it's about information flowing from institutions to individuals. A mighty river -- with a source, a current, a direction.
Advancements in society and technology -- increased literacy, the printing press, the emergence of a global media establishment -- fed this river like tributaries; making its movement swifter, the currents
stronger.
But always, there was direction describing the flow of information.
Now, we're on the cusp of a new era that stands on the shoulders of the computer age, the information age -- it's the communication age, the age of participation.
Today's generation of technologists talk proudly about the advancements of this new era. They use exponentials to describe the speed with which computers can process and transmit information.
On the surface, there would seem to be such capacity of this new age to fuel the mighty river of information; the current of communication of the age that came before it.
Yet, that's not precisely what we see happening.
There are between 1-2 billion people connected to the network, depending on who you ask. And that number is expected to grow by 35% over the next two years.
People are coming to the network to claim an identity; to articulate a voice; to share information; to communicate.
And with this proliferation, a new tide is rising. The information age has laid the groundwork for a new model.
And it's challenging our traditional notion of communication; it's going against the tide that we understand; the one we're accustomed to; the one that some of us have built professions and careers around.
From the front pages of newspapers and news sites we learned that social networking sites such as MySpaces, Friendster, and Facebook, are at the epicenter of activity for hundreds of millions of people. MySpace had 106 million accounts on September 8, 2006 according to published reports and the site reportedly attracts new registrations at a rate of 230,000 per day.
The Bloggers. Another phenomenon. There are at least 70 million blogs in existence today. That number is growing at a rate of 120,000 per day -- that's 1.4 every second, according to Technorati, a which says the number of blogs has been doubling every five months for the last three years.
Exponentials drive everything. We're no longer using using geometric trends to characterize advancements in technology. We're using these exponential mathematics to describe human interaction -- a human perspective and the ability of a network infrastructure to amplify it.
Communication.
The transmission of information.
But this time, it's source is not an institution.
It's source assumes the first person.
And that first person perspective is being amplified by the network -- an infrastructure that's readily accessible, available, and affordable in the developed world.
The stakeholder invested in communicating a message no longer has to build the infrastructure to carry it.
Barriers to entry have been dramatically decreased; and the diversity of perspectives -- of information -- grows analogously in the opposite direction.
The bloggers, the social network sites, viral media -- these are all evidence points that we have entered a new era; and new rules need to be developed to describe communication; new strategies need to be developed
to ride this new current because it is clear it can not be directed; it can not be contained.
It's this that I'd like to challenge your thinking on today.
With a perspective...
Mary Smaragdis