Author: Christopher Carfi

There are a huge number of parallels that are constantly being drawn between systems design and architecture. In particular, danah boyd goes down this path in “from architecture to urban planning: technology development in a networked age.” danah writes:

“I’m reminded of a book by Stewart Brand – How Building Learn. In it, Brand talks about how buildings evolve over time based on their use and the aging that takes place. A building is not just the end-result of the designer, but co-constructed by the designer, nature, and the inhabitant over time. When i started thinking about technology as architecture, i realized the significance of that book. We cannot think about technologies as finalized products, but as evolving architectures. This should affect the design process at the getgo, but it also highlights the differences between physical and digital architectures. What would it mean if 92 million people were living in the house simultaneously with different expectations for what colors the walls should be painted? What would it mean if the architect was living inside the house and fighting with the family about the intention of the mantel?

The networked nature of web technologies brings the architect into the living room of the house, but the question still remains: what is the responsibility of a live-in architect? Coming in as an authority on the house does no good – in that way, the architect should still be dead. But should the architect just be a glorified fixer-upper/plumber/electrician? Should the architect support the aging of the house to allow it to become eccentric?”

I think in a co-created world, the role of the tender-of-the-system is a bit different even from what danah alludes to in the last paragraph above. With millions of individuals interacting with a system, it would be impossible to “architect” where the system should go once the system begins to interact with its environment. And the tender-of-the-system certainly should not be locked into the role of the glorified fixer-upper/plumber/electrician. Not only is it not fulfilling, it also eventually dooms a system to stagnancy.

When there are millions of forces acting on a system, isn’t it necessary for that system to become more biological in nature, to absorb and react to the various forces acting on it? And if so, shouldn’t the role of the system’s steward be more like that of a gardener — watering over here, providing a trellis for support over there, and even pruning where it is required in order to ensure the vibrancy of the whole system, while still allowing it to grow and interact and exhibit emergent properties that could never have been forseen?

JP Rangaswami coins a great phrase, “the enterprise immune system,” over at the Confused of Calcutta blog. JP writes:

“As far as I can make out, enterprise immune systems tend to try and reject the implementation of social software on one or more of five grounds:

The McEnroe Defence. You cannot be serious. This isn’t work. It’s a waste of time. Just look at the terms used: blogs, wikis, chat, Really Simple Syndication. You’re paid to do hard work, do you think this is a holiday camp? Next you’ll be asking for massage parlours and pedicures and pool tables. Get real.

Ostrich-Head-Meets-Sand. I have enough trouble trying to manage my e-mail and voicemail, now you want me to look in more places for more things and spend more time doing that. What are you, some kind of sadist? Just make my e-mail work, will you? And leave me alone.

It’s All Rubbish Anyway. Just look at the crap that gets published and circulated. What’s the matter, suddenly you think everyone’s an expert? if you really think so, we don’t need you, do we? So go fire yourself and leave us real experts to get on with our jobs.

Say It Ain’t So, Clayton. Look, I just want what I already have to work faster, cheaper, better. What do you mean, Innovator’s Dilemma? I’ll give you Dilemma. Some of us have real jobs and don’t have time to read.

Where’s The Beef? So show me the ROI, get the business heads to sign up and commit, get the finance guys to vet independently, then do it. No tickee no payee.”

In the post, JP paricularly addresses the “It’s All Rubbish, Anyway” objection, and nails it. (Go read the whole thing, including the comments.)

Although the original context is around social software, I think the objections above (especially numbers 2, 4 and 5) are endemic, and are roadblocks in the face of many (most?) kinds of organizational change.

In overcoming these objections, Ross Mayfield and Suw Charman have put together a great article entitled “An Adoption Strategy for Social Software in the Enterprise.” Buried in the article is the nugget that I think is the most relevant, lead by example. The best thing about this approach is that anyone can do it. If it’s the right approach, others will follow (although it may take a while). That’s where the core of real, sustainable change comes from…not from top-down mandates or arbitrary process change.

I’m interested in your thoughts. In general (i.e. doesn’t need to be related to social software), does anyone have any good stories of how they effected change and addressed one of the objections noted above?

Sen. Ted Stevens: It’s A Series of Tubes (dance remix), from here.

Back story on Sen. Ted Stevens/The Internet Is A Series Of Tubes here. And Jon Stewart’s take.

(image credit: boldheaded)

In his post, “The Next Web Is The Human Web,” Scoble writes:

“Quick, do a little project with me. Visit the home pages of Nestle and Quixtar.

Without clicking anywhere find me a real human being. Not one made out of a stock photo agency.

You don’t need to look. There aren’t any. Not to mention that you can’t talk to a real human being. And I don’t see anything on those two pages that I’d like to link to. Which means they won’t get high search engine rankings no matter how many SEO firms they pay.

Which is like throwing money down the toilet. If you met THE PEOPLE behind these companies I think you’d be far more likely to listen to what they have to say. Or sell. And they ARE experts on their business. It’s a damn shame that they aren’t allowed to talk with us on their Web sites.” (emphasis added)

Bingo. This is why Haystack networking is going to be a huge business.

Bonus link: Ross Mayfield
And one more: ThinkGeek

A few weeks back, Dave Gray reframed the way I thought about the word create-ive. Now, Doc has reframed the way I think about blogging. Doc states:

“I don’t deny that I am sometimes on stage and sometimes an audience member (the latter more often than the former). But I’m uncomfortable with the theater metaphor (Shakespeare withstanding), at least in respect to blogging. I think bloggers have readers, not audiences. And I think the distinction is important, if not essential…'[Blogging] is Theater’ is an example of what cognitive linguists call a conceptual metaphor, or a frame. It’s something we think and talk in terms of. Meaning, we borrow a concept (a frame) and and its vocabulary to understand and talk about a subject. There are entailments to the theater metaphor. One is the old top-down media that really were comprised of performers and audiences. Because peer practices like blogging and podcasting don’t require the same asymmetries, why continue to use an asymmetrical frame when symmetrical one will do?“

Spot. On.

Put another way, here’s a hypothetical situation. You go to the grocery store, and run into an old friend in the bakery aisle and start getting caught up. Pop quiz: Which one of you is the audience?

Exactly.

There is no hierarchy. There is no power gradient. Neither one of you is the “audience.” Sure, the roles change back and forth as the conversation flows, but, ultimately, it’s a partnership and a collaborative effort and exchange. Sometimes one party may be speaking more, sometimes the other, but at the end of the interaction, the experience that has been shared has been a jointly created one.

Chris Brogan’s recent post, Connect, Connect, Connect, is spot-on.

One thing I’d add…like Surowiecki’s admonition in Wisdom of Crowds for “cognitive diversity”, connections for me are the most enlightening when they span many different groups. Geeks. Artists. Business people. Supporters. Skeptics.

The most interesting things happen where the edges meet.

Get outside your comfort zone. There are a lot of neat things to learn out there, if you make the effort to meet the people who know them.

Update: This is what happens without a diverse network.

I’ve been on hold with “The New AT&T!” for about ten minutes now. The hold music? An enless loop of a horrible cover of the Doobie Brothers’ “Minute By Minute.”

Yes, as I sit here on hold, I hear a loop of

Minute by minute by minute by minute
I keep holding on…

That’s the only part of the song that’s playing. On a loop. Indefinitely.

…like a customer scorned. The Ben, he is not so happy with The Amex these days.

It’s easy to take Jay Rosen’s eloquence for granted. Don’t. As one of the the most thought-ful (hyphen intended) people I’ve encountered over the last few years, Jay consistently triggers thoughts and conversation that raise the bar for those around him.

Had a great lunch with Jay at Bloggercon over the weekend and just found a link to his piece, “The People Formerly Known As The Audience” in my inbox. In the same vein as Cluetrain (the impact of which the Social Customer Manifesto humbly aspires to achieve a fraction), Jay has nailed his points to the door. A few are reproduced here. Rosen:

“The people formerly known as the audience are those who were on the receiving end of a media system that ran one way, in a broadcasting pattern, with high entry fees and a few firms competing to speak very loudly while the rest of the population listened in isolation from one another— and who today are not in a situation like that at all.

• Once they were your printing presses; now that humble device, the blog, has given the press to us. That’s why blogs have been called little First Amendment machines. They extend freedom of the press to more actors.
• Once it was your radio station, broadcasting on your frequency. Now that brilliant invention, podcasting, gives radio to us. And we have found more uses for it than you did.
• Shooting, editing and distributing video once belonged to you, Big Media. Only you could afford to reach a TV audience built in your own image. Now video is coming into the user’s hands, and audience-building by former members of the audience is alive and well on the Web.
• You were once (exclusively) the editors of the news, choosing what ran on the front page. Now we can edit the news, and our choices send items to our own front pages.
• A highly centralized media system had connected people “up” to big social agencies and centers of power but not ‘across’ to each other. Now the horizontal flow, citizen-to-citizen, is as real and consequential as the vertical one.”

While Rosen shines the spotlight on the audiences of media, all of us are catching the reflected glow as participants in every marketplace. The points made above are not restricted to the world of media, or of journalism. They are, instead, another channel marker on a collaborative, generation-long journey where we all get to choose the ports-of-call.