A Facebook friend shared an old video with me recently. It was an archive of a local nightly news broadcast from a Cleveland television station circa ~ 1977.
The newsmen (yes, they were all men) were covering a snow storm. There were a couple guys in the studio, and one was on the scene:
"So, it's really snowing out there isn't it, Fred? Oh yeah, you got that right, it sure is, Jim... lots and lots of snow everywhere. Wow, so lots of snow then? Yeah, snow. Tons of snow. It's really something, the snow is - isn't it..."
The same basic exchange was repeated over and over for about 15 minutes. Did we really need those guys to tell us (over and over) that it was snowing while we were searching for our cars buried under a huge snow drift somewhere? (Not that I remember this point in history, of course ;-)
Our current 24-hour news cycle still seems to perpetuate this habit at times (but faster). My point is, those guys in '77 might have been so mesmerized by the medium (and impressed with themselves) that maybe they missed the whole story.
Fast forward: 2012 and the social web. Might we be so seduced by the mechanisms available to us that we don't quite know why or how to use them? Are we "talking snow" all over the place? We send a video here, tag a photo of a person eating dinner (in the snow) over there, or tweet random/redundant content everywhere. Why?
The amount of stuff that used to take 10,000 years to bounce 'round the world now is exchanged every single day.
ralph solonitz
Intuitively I think it's all a good thing. But imagine if we took more of this sometimes-random sometimes-redundant hyper-exchanged information, and targeted and tailored it just a wee bit better. For example, there are schools in Nepal that only have a few books (literally). The books are secured under lock and key because they are so scarce and valued. Thus ironically, the resources the kids desperately need aren't necessarily available to them.
I have a friend who's thinking through strategies for the electronic targeting and delivery of certain educational material to those very kids. Sure, there are numerous challenges beginning with the fact that many of the locations don't currently have computers and/or Internet access. But the concepts are relatively simple:
- Who needs the info?
- What exactly is the info they need?
- How can we get them the info? and/or...
- How can they find said info without "us"?
The technology we currently have (at most of our fingertips) is truly amazing. But, I think we can do even amazing-er things in this world if we're just a little less intrigued and/or limited by the medium itself, and a bit better at delivering the right content, to the right people, at the right time.
Sure, at times it feels as though we've "cracked the code" on using these technologies effectively - but I think we've only just begun.
craig arthur james 2012
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