Social media on the web (blogs, wikis, podcasts, videos) have given the 1 billion connected people on the planet the basic tools of production in a knowledge economy. We can create mental abstractions that represent our knowledge and then share them with the world for validation. For the first time in history, the workers own the means of production of the valuable assets of the current economy – intangible goods. We know that intangibles are valuable because that’s what our stock markets tell us. For example, the S&P index is over 85% intangibles.
This ability to be the means of production makes informal learning on the web very powerful. We have always learned informally; in corridors between classes or when interacting on the job. Now we can have many more of these interactions and we can find people who are as passionate about an issue as we are. Informal learning in our networked society is not something that you inject into formal training nor is it something you add to your favourite mix of “blended learning”. Informal learning is a paradigm-shifting phenonomen that has arrived because we are now connected, we have cheap technologies and we need to increase our knowledge due to the complex challenges we face in our economies and societies.
As we become more connected, I think that informal learning may become the only way that we will learn in the future. We will need individual, customised experiences and we will decide what these will be. Formal, standardized training & education will become second class. Standardized jobs will be the lowest paying ones, so who will want standardized education? Not anyone who has a choice. The choices will be various and many will be free. They already are.
How can organisations take advantage of this? Create a compelling reason for workers to want to advance the purpose of your enterprise and then give them the means (unfettered access to tools and other people) to learn on their own. If your organisation deserves it, then your workers will figure out what’s best for them, their organisation and our society. Sound radical? It is.
Diagram by Dion Hinchcliffe
Update: and then I come across Chris Sessums’ blog post on Read, Write, Mix Burn … where he refers to a paper written by Robbie McClintock seven years ago:
“In a world in which each individual can pursue most any personal purpose in most any place that suits him, all on his own initiative, the habit of relying on authoritative institutions, which operate through commands enforced by penalties and inducements, may sharply diminish. With the change of phase in the opportunity factor, people need less and less to rely on formal institutions for a chance to fulfill their personal purposes. And as more and more people become aware of the unlimited choices that they have in their personal lives, sanctions and incentives will become ineffectual means of administering authoritative commands in government, society, business, and education.” (para 101)
Great diagram, IMO .. and great thoughts / interpretation to accompany it.
Way to go, Harold.
Dion Hinchcliffe’s diagrams can really spark my thinking. His site is worth visiting regularly:
http://web2.wsj2.com/
I just stumbled unto this nice video explaining Web 2.0 and thought I’d share it here, 🙂
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOE
Thanks, Gerard. Yes, this video is getting a lot of attention. It’s pretty neat.
Neat Harold – very good work
Rob
Great chart Harold.
May I ask why there is no representation for books in the media segment?
Are they not continuing provocateurs of mass social media?
Hey, Graham, it’s not my chart; it’s Dion Hinchcliffe’s, who has made it available for fair use under a Creative Commons (attribution, non-commercial, share-alike) license. I just linked to it. I would say that books come under the category of “traditional media – print”, as shown on the diagram.
Harold dear:
But can you put the Bible, Quran, Torah, Silent Spring, Mein Kampf, ,
Wind, Sand and Stars, War and Peace, Heart of Darkness, The Count of Monte Christo in a little storage box marked ‘print’, squashed in there with double-page spreads for Ford trucks, Tampax ads and Reader’sDigest condensations? Books start wars, movements, religions, imaginations, thinking, raging. Is it worth considering that blogs are just print with the thinking time removed so they can fit in a conversational delivery system? Are more blogs necessarily better thinking? The explosive increase in crafts shows only resulted in a plethora of the same old stuff. Was an extraordinary petitpoint pillow created that blew apart the crafts world? Ask Andrea and let me know. When we decrease construction (thinking) time do we decrease quality of thought? When we increase blog numbers do we increase quality? And how do you sort through the crap? The oral tradition was right there in your face, reciprocal. Everyone receiving while they gave. It took time, not just intimacy. Time is something to which we should pay more attention. We need to challenge more assumptions, ask more questions with less cheerleader agreement about what a clever time we live within. We’re far too accepting of the present.
Sorry, got to go, I’m out of meds.
Thanks for the shot of reality, Graham. I do believe that you hit on a key point, though. The web, with its multi-way communications between “real people” (like you and me buddy) is actually retrieving much of that oral tradition that we lost as a literate print-based society.
Books won’t die, but they are bound to be usurped by the ubiquitous electronic surround. Books will become a pleasure but no longer a necessity; kind of like the fountain pen. It’s not what “I” want, but it’s the pattern that I see.
Books will always be a necessity because they’re portable, as are pencils, and non-electric. The fountain pen is merely an elegant anachronism.
I guess we’ll let the next generation decide that point, Graham 😉
As you know, I have hundreds of books and really enjoy reading, but it’s not about me any more.
But can you put the Bible, Quran, Torah, Silent Spring, Mein Kampf, ,
Wind, Sand and Stars, War and Peace, Heart of Darkness, The Count of Monte Christo in a little storage box marked ‘print’, squashed in there with double-page spreads for Ford trucks, Tampax ads and Reader’sDigest condensations? Books start wars, movements, religions, imaginations, thinking, raging. Is it worth considering that blogs are just print with the thinking time removed so they can fit in a conversational delivery system?
Of course you can put great books that move civilizations in a little storage box marked ‘print’ along with Readers’ Digest, just as you can put obscure and sloppy blogs along with blogs and networked communities that are doing great things, changing peoples’ and communities lives in this era. Especially when considering the purpose of said diagram and the range of meda it covers.
Some blogs are print with thinking removed, just as are a majority of the books for sale in many bookstores near you. Just because print is packaged in one form versus another does not qualify the ideas or consciousness the symbols that are the print represent as more or less worthy. Unpack that sentence, go ahead .. I dare ya 😉