A colleague sent me an article from the June 29, 2008 edition of The New York Times by Luis Suarez called "I Freed Myself From E-Mail?s Grip".?
Suarez is a "social computing evangelist? for?I.B.M.?and the basic premise of his article was that effective use of social media and social networking tools and social networking sites has helped him cut down on his e-mail traffic and communicate with greater efficiency.
My colleague asked me:
"At the risk of showing my ignorance of current changes in communication technology?(and all the alleged corollary changes in management, communication styles, etc), I am wondering…Is this guy remarkably smart, or haven't we (humans) always have to do this? Didn't printing, radio, television, all provide revolutions in the availability of information? Doesn't everyone have to sort through information to decide what's worth it? Sort of, like, critical thinking skills when you see a blatantly idiotic commercial? ?What am I missing here – brilliant insight or belated reaction?" ?
First, I want to share one of my favorite mantras:
Change is constant.
At the risk of sounding too academic (well, sometimes I am!), we could go even further back to document "revolutionary" changes in human communication such as (and I'm listing very general dates with which some may disagree…):
Image via Wikipedia- Human language
- Cave/Wall paintings
- Cuneiform tablets – remarkably, today's PDAs are about about the same size and shape!
- Papyrus / Paper
- Movable type printing press (circa 1439) – from which books and newspapers came
- Telegraph (circa 1838)
- Telephone (circa 1876)
- Radio (circa 1888, but gained widespread use in the 1920s in the USA)
- Television (circa 1930s and became commonplace in the 1950s)
- Cable television (1948 with growing popularity in the 1990s/2000s)
- Satellite television (1962 with HBO debuting around 1975)
- Mobile phones?(Motorola in 1973, first network in Japan in 1978), leading to satellite phones
- ARPANET, the Internet's predecessor (1983)
- The Internet?(massive initial adoption 1993-96)
- Satellite radio?(circa 2004)
- Social media / networking (circa 2004)
When we look back at massive changes in human history, such as the?Neolithic revolution?and the more recent?British agricultural revolution, which led to the?industrial revolution, we can see the sometimes uncomfortable upheavals that these changes caused in many societies and cultures. That's the nature of revolution — planned or unplanned.
So what are we faced with today? Our current revolution is a blend of revolutions in technology and information sharing. It is changing how we can, do and will communicate and share information with others.
Notice that that each revolutionary development takes approximately half or less of the time to appear as the previous development. It is no wonder that the current changes in how we receive and disburse information are moving at such a rapid pace that it understandably unnerves or confuses some people — and why some people (mistakenly) think it's simply a fad or something that can be ignored.?
I can assure you that what is happening is anything but a fad. And it simply shouldn't be ignored, especially if you are an international educational exchange professional working with students and scholars.
To put this in perspective for international education: In 1995, I was part of a presentation at the NAFSA annual conference that about the "revolution" that email communication and the web were going to bring to the profession of international educational exchange. In fact, one of my first posts on this blog was "Revisiting New Orleans" in which I compared my presentation then with the situation now. I think it's worth a read.
My colleague went on to ask:
Ruth, after looking at the Manitou Heights website, and noting all sorts of things like "tags" "digg", etc., maybe you could also comment. Like, what the h*** are they, how are they different, and so on!!!? What is social software and collaborative tools??
What is happening in this phase of the development is what is commonly known as Web 2.0, a term with which you should familiarize yourself. Below I have listed some good starting points to help you understand some of the elements of Web 2.0. (By the way, some of you might be interested in a?comparison of the accuracy of Wikipedia vs. Encyclop?dia Britannica.)
- Social media
- Social network
- An explanation of?Social network services?
- A?list of some of the major sites (like Facebook, MySpace, etc.)
- Sites where you can connect with me (also known as Find/Follow)
- Social network aggregation sites that help organize what you're doing on your social network sites and with your social media tools
At the end of the article, Suarez says:
"THINK about whether my experience could work for you. Think about how to use social networking tools to eliminate spam and to avoid repeatedly answering the same question from many different people. These tools can also save you from an accumulation of online newsletters that never get read, and from those incessant project status reports that clutter many in-boxes.
E-mail can become extinct, if not repurposed altogether, even at big companies like I.B.M. An e-mail in-box no longer needs to be like Pandora?s box."
From my own experience, I think that Suarez' perspective is pretty accurate and definitely has applications to the field of international educational exchange. My own email volume has dropped drastically as I begin to utilize new ways of communicating by using social media tools and social networking sites with others. And my communication has become more collaborative than ever before.
Does it mean I have less communicating to do? No, on the contrary, I have more. The big difference is that I can now do it more effectively and efficiently in less time with a broader reach.
If I were, for example, a director of an international educational exchange program or office, a student/scholar advisor or in charge of marketing for a program, I would be making some radical shifts in the ways in which I communicate to my students and scholars and other constituencies. What kind of changes? Well, it would depend upon what the needs are for my office or organization. Helping institutions, organizations and offices determine their needs and sharing that information is what my consulting practice is all about these days.
Is social media and social networking the answer to everything? Of course not! Does it replace the human interaction that we prize in this field? Absolutely not! Does it have the capability of enhancing and encouraging those human interactions? I believe that, with wise and effective use, it does. And I think we in international education have not even begun to explore or realize that power of what these tools may be able to do for us and for our students and scholars.
Bottom line?
Ignore this revolution at your own (or your program's and/or your institution's) peril.
That's my advice. And that's why people hire me to help them navigate in this new and developing environment. The waters aren't entirely uncharted. Some have gone before, particularly in business, marketing, public relations and journalism. What I do is look at where the early explorers have gone and what their explorations and findings may mean for the present and future of our profession. Sort of a trickle down effect, if you will.
I hope this post has helped to answer some of my colleague's questions and encouraged you all to explore what is happening with social media and social networking.
If you have questions that you'd like me to try to answer, please feel free use my site Contact Form to contact me directly with your questions?- or simply contact me through one of the social networking sites where I have an account. After all, this blog is here to help you!?
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