VINT-The-Dark-Side-of-Social-Media-Alarm-Bells-Analysis-and-the-Way-Out

10 Basic prescription:
social is the new capital
We never cease to be amazed at the things happening
around us. Ever since Aristotle, such amazement has been
the first step towards understanding. So it is not surprising
that this is what marked the beginning of this trend
report. Amazement at how social media have changed our
lives. Whether people are on the road, at home, at work
or in a place of entertainment: it never takes long before
they reach for their mobile device. Everyone uses or wants
to use the smartphone and the tablet, and most of all their
own apps. Magnificent, all that “tech” — never before was it
so wonderful and intense.
Digital technology and functionality are closely interwoven
in our lives — to such a degree that the pet name “tech” has
now come to stand for one big addition: the sum of technology,
economy, culture and history. It affords an excellent
perspective on reality and the future: according to the
Swedish firm of Berg Insight, 98 billion mobile apps will
have been downloaded in 2015. And they all contain our
attention, experience and knowledge. You name it, there is
an app for it nowadays. And most of them have that social
component: it is standard these days.
There it is, the real New Economy — admittedly, twelve
years from date — based on the other three tipped to do
the job: the Attention, Experience and Knowledge Economies.
Still not enough, it is true, to gloss over the current
debt crisis of banks and nations in less than no time, but
all the same … All in all, one would expect people to be
surprised, or at least to have noticed this, consciously or
unconsciously.
Apart from all the amazing “tech” changes around us,
what really matters is the ensuing effects. On the one hand
there is this serious crisis, and on the other the enormous
boom of apps on the most powerful and easy-to-use small
computers ever. The combination of attention, experience
and knowledge — consciously linked to our social-minded
nature and the human intellect — should enable us to reap
profits, businesswise.
Going through with it, from the social Web 2.0 to Social
Businesses and a Social Society: that is the message.
Similar to the way the established e-business once began
(Pizza Hut, 1994) with the e-commerce consumer experiment.
Eight years later, Social Business is the natural next
development of e-business. Being focused on people-first,
commitment and transparency, Social Business dovetails
with the consumer experiment of Web 2.0, which started in
2004.
The radical growth of mobile social media is in sharp
contrast with the relatively gradual growth in large sectors
of the economy. Here too the demand for a decisive and
bold way of handling social media is directive. We should
embrace social media and steer them in the right direction.
This is what marks the growth process, in which new
structures emerge that in due course turn out to be the
basis of new radical growth and prosperity in the rest of the
economy. What is currently being done there is primarily
cutting dead wood and sitting out the winter in preparation
for a new cycle — as with the seasons.
The remarkable “tech” character (technological + economic
+ cultural + historic) of social media also manifests
itself in cultural clashes. Actually they are of all time, but
they are currently more intensive than ever due to the
digital awareness and other forms of empowerment, such
as hacktivism. Countercultures and subcultures such as
WikiLeaks, Anonymous and Occupy, to mention the most
conspicuous, need to be fitted in by means of transparency
and commitment. Conscious efforts to steer them in
the direction of Social Society and Social Business form a
basic prescription against many dark sides of social media.
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Basic prescription: social is the new capital