Malcolm Gladwell and the New Religion

Malcolm Gladwell has caused a stir with his article in the New Yorker about social media. Many of my friends have been talking about this, not least writer Charles Koppelman. I thought I’d post my thoughts as the email I sent him…

Charles: last night I was at the Frontline for an event called “TV journalism in the 21st century: The real golden age?”  I was unsure if the ‘golden’ was a reference to the money being made or the quality of the coverage.  The panelists were:

– Peter Horrocks, BBC director of global news

– Ben Cohen, Channel 4 News technology correspondent

– Greg Beitchman, global editor of the Reuters news agency

– Simon Bucks, associate editor at Sky News.

Chaired by Matt Wells, head of audio at the Guardian, and presenter of the Media Talk podcast.

Naturally a lot of time was spent talking about Britain’s ‘Berlusconi moment’  when/if Rupert Murdoch is allowed to buy Sky. But the other big issue was how broadcast news is dealing with twitter/fb/blogs etc. What makes me nervous is the kind of fizzy enthusiasm everywhere. The kind we usually associate with frat boys and hen parties. I’ve been around technology long enough to know that out there somewhere in the great unknown are unintended consequences.

Remember the Moon, how we were all on our way to space? How Atomic electricity would be so cheap it wouldn’t be worth monitoring? How thalidomide would transform women’s lives (it did alright)? How we would use our fantastically advanced technology to win the Iraq war in a few weeks; It’ll all be over by christmas? Young Ben Cohen was so overwhelmed with the glory of his tweeting job I thought he might fidget off the stage.

Whenever I hear the great crowd bellowing in the certainty of a new religion, little alarm bells go off in the back of my mind. I read the Gladwell article carefully. It seemed to me he was saying that the kinds of relationships that made the civil rights movement work are fundamentally different than the kind that people have on fb and twitter. Sociology is not my specialty, and he may be wrong, I don’t know.

What I am certain of is this: we are once again conducting an experiment on ourselves with no controls. We have a habit of doing this. Of course I use twitter and fb, but I’m old and my brain is also well attuned to reading books etc. How much do we know about the way the human brain develops with kids who don’t have any of that, and who’s family structure is not nearly as stable of most of ours were?

I’m a huge fan of Ray Kurzweil and I agree with him that we’re in a very rapidly accelerating technological environment, which along with all the good things, will inevitably bring accelerating unintended consequences.

My main concern with social media is that people assume that Google, Fb and Twitter are friendly corporations run by cool young people who are on ‘our’ side. What I know is that these companies have the largest databases of human behaviour ever constructed and I’m relying on their goodwill to use it wisely. I trust large corporations like I trust governments.