Cine-Video Journalism Anti Aesthetic II from david dunkley gyimah on Vimeo.
A social network is..an interdependent assembly of people, deconstructing wikipedia.
That's more or less it. No less a revelation than saying chimpanzees are carnivorous. Yes they are!
I'm given a talk to a couple of FTSE 100 companies in the coming weeks in which I'll pontoon my right-side thoughts (mainly research PhD) over the horizon.
For all what we know about Social Networks, it's not the now that interests you as intensely as what happens next? Not to mention also that Social Networks still largely promote hierarchical relations. Bummer huh! Everyone wants to be followed - the sub cult of celebrity.
The now is very simple. People who largely participate in Social Networks -that's a weird way of putting it - do so for largely purely implicitly selfish reasons. Unless you give to an NGO or cause and attend luncheons.
Social Networks are as altruistic as a burglar leaving a house with no goods. OK that's a tad glib, because it's not a static sentient. But the reason we engage in them is because we want something.
Networked Socially
I follow Mashables because I want knowledge. Everything about them is cool and rockstarish, but I'm fickle and am not a mate per se in the classic definition.I'm not part of an inner core which is bound by different principles, but I may rise to a request if the outcome is symbiotic or favorable to my sentiments.
That is if a website I liked was about to close down and I was a big fan I'd sign a petition. But my involvement is limited.
The idea then that your raison detre is to grow a humongous following on twitter then has Freudian value, unless that is you can constantly shift the outer core to the inner. We need to know we're loved.
Small wonder Twitter now has categories.. Hmm the people I really like and those that I like and those that I almost like as well as the others and .... well! Don't get me wrong this is not an attack on Social Networks. I love em. But I'd like to understand them better as well. Read Smart Mobs.
Networked On
So what next then? Aha! My editor would wish I save these opinions for the book I'm writing.That said quite a handful have been splattered in my posts from years back somewhere and over viewmagazine, which when I ditch CS4 will get to some designs and fresh cans of packaged knowledge.
One of the legacies of being an academic is that you're always working. I read so many books, that I becry the fact that I don't read enough. PLEASE SEND ME YOUR READING LIST
Years back I interviewed a senior intelligence chief ( ex CIA) who told me everything the CIA needed to know about Intel can be found on the web. (This interview was produced in 2002 when Flash had no controls - really must change that.)
The web, once a pipe, now a connector of people and repository of vast knowledge is onto its next star trek moment.
Google unleashed or is that relaunched the beast a couple of days back with intelligent personalised searching. Soon you really will be saying computer
"how soon till Jim turn up?"
Computer: "three minutes".
It's simple triangulate Jim's coordinates with his geoposition and as a personalised priority search the computer knows who you're talking about. Such data mining is already possible.
Conference for art & journalism thinkers
But that's not really what interests me. It's the confluence of forces within the three Rs and for adland sense you'll forgive the tautology.- Readers or reapers - you harvesting knowledge
- (w)righters - those that give. Trad media had a puritanical view to this. I won't bore you with my history lecture circa 1700-2000
- Resources - Oh how the 30% margin has changed, but making 1,000,000 UKP a month C'mon what's there to argue.
It's all changing, will continue to change and the signs for regeneration presuppose when solutions are found to any one of the variables and their problems there will be swift adaptations.
Yep we're fighting the first 21st century global knowledge war and with all wars there are always casualties and then personnel beef up, return smarter, wiser to start again. Watch the calender for China versus the US, which will dwarf the debate about journalism and who pays and who goes to the wall.
So please join me if you will, because as part of my artist in residency at the South Bank, next year I'm looking to produce a conference that takes artistic license in unravelling a parallel planet earth, already beset with all manner of changes.
The World in 2020 - and how we got there.
Now that involves a nice bit of knowledge capital to give.
David writes: watch out for information about Collisions - the coming together of some of the best thinkers in their field at the South Bank. I'm building a site and prepping film. You really don't want to miss this. Think of putting a range of TED speakers in one room
