There have been some very interesting blog posts this morning that essentially reflect on the seeming inability of parts of society to join us early adopters on the happy trail we’re blazing as we open our lives online, engage with each other and participate in a way that has never before been available to us until the very recent past.
First, Elias Bizannes’ excellent and well-considered piece on the global implications of the Federal Government’s push (against all better advice and judgment) to impose a clean Internet feed on Australian society and then Laurel Papworth’s piece on a tweeting juror, that may have implications for the outcome of a trial.
In terms of my desires, I’m as big an idealist as the next social media junkie. I want desperately for open, accountable, online, empowered and empowering government. And the same for business, finance, education, health care and every other slow-to-adopt part of society.
But I’m also a realist. And what I realise is that what this is about is change. And change is hard.
There’s a reason why change is hard, and it’s (arguably) this – without a reason to change, without a compelling reason to change, there’s no reason to change. There’s no impetus to take the next step.
Whether that’s something as simple as allowing your staff to engage with your clients in an open way and solve their problems. Or something more complex such as changing the law, or the way the law is interpreted, to allow more open implementations of copyright such as Creative Commons. Or really taking the time at the government and political level to understand that implementing something such as a clean feed is pointless and what you will get value out of instead is education and supporting parents who want to filter their Internet connections.
Until such time as the slower adopting parts of society see the need for them to change, the rest of us have a job. Education.
We need to educate the slow adopters. Find for them a compelling reason to adopt, adapt and evolve. Find the ROI. Or the benefit. And deliver it up to them on a silver platter.
Not only will we then get to see the change we so desire, we’ll be responsible for it! We’ll be the good guys, rather than the ranty, idealistic, pie-in-the-sky loonies many of the more conservative parts of society see us as.
It doesn’t matter that two-and-a-half years after I discovered and began using Twitter that the lump in the middle of the curve has now found it too. What matters is that those of us that have been around this stuff for a while don’t come across as elitist twats. We need to be welcoming and reasoned in our arguments with the reticent. And we need to be teachers.
And sometimes, as much as we would desire it to be otherwise, we need to accept that there are certain places (such as jury rooms) that you just don’t tweet from.
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Exactly! Give that man a cigar, a high five and any other cliche of agreement I can think of.
Change requires a lot more than desire as suggested. Plus, change will be a two-way street. No one suggests the law is perfect but to expect the law to change to accomodate everything about online behaviour is naive. The recent arguments about social media and the courtroom are perfect examples where social media has to adapt to the law and not the other way round.
Because people want to tweet from the courtroom or create facebook groups in violation of court orders out of “natural human behaviour” is not a reason for change, but regulation.
So… it isn’t change that is hard, what’s difficult is coming up with MEANINGFUL change that makes sense for the people responsible for making it happen (and those being impacted). If I give you the opportunity to change from a pauper to a millionaire, you’ll probably be happy with that, even if there are some strings attached.
Cheers for this post. It may have tipped me onto the no-filter side of the fence… I’ve been a fence sitter on the issue all along.