Digital hierarchies

IBM is holding a social business jam this week and lots of high profile people are attending. Check the special guest list. If you want to be part of the action you can sign up for free. To contribute you have to set up your profile and put yourself in one of the pre-selected categories like “Social Network Junkie” or “Baby Boomer”. That’s where I stopped. There was no “none of the above” to select and I didn’t like any of the choices. I am not a label.

Image: Jam by Sally

My first foray as a lurker to the jam showed that most of the conversations were around marketing. My idea of social business is working smarter through social learning. Marketing is merely the tip of the iceberg.

The more I thought about this jam, the more I felt that Jaron Lanier was right:

The people who are perhaps the most screwed by open culture are the middle classes of intellectual and cultural creation. The freelance studio musician, the stringer selling reports to newspapers from warzones are both crucial contributors to culture. Each pays dues and devotes years to honing a craft. They used to live off the trickle down effects of the old system, and like the middle class at large, they are precious. They get nothing from the new system.

Are we all a bunch of TED wannabe’s looking for some exclusive opportunity to be special? The good news is: you are special. The bad news is: so is everyone else.

The open Web, without special sign-ons or walled gardens or exclusive clubs is where we can co-create the knowledge needed for the 21st century. It has to be open, transparent and easily reproduceable & linkable. If not, we’re just building digital versions of the hierarchies and silos of the 20th century.

Update:

Here’s the label where I stopped: