Sociology Not Technology
If you read one blog today, click on Brian Solis. He nails it with his post on the sociology of social media.
Technology enables us to communicate, but the tools change constantly. People don’t change. People are relationship-based and communicate through networks in their lives.
For the first time, the web allows us to mimic the way that people communicate in the real world. However, we spend more time studying the tools rather than the methods behind the tools.
From an academic perspective, most studies focus on the effect of a particular medium on people, especially with television. We aren’t focusing on how people communicate, but how they internalize the message that the medium forces on them through broadcast methods.
We’re always wondering what the next big thing is. What happens when the Facebook phenomenon ends? Will Twitter hit the mainstream? Is e-mail dead? If we understand the conversation and are participating, the tools are secondary. If true two-way communication exists, the right technology tools will be there. It’s all about that conversation:
Today, conversations are markets and markets are conversations. And the forums for these conversation cultivate an tight, unswerving and mostly unforgiving community and culture. Participation requires observation in order to understand the the sociological landscape and the dynamics that define each community. They are after all, populated by people, not audiences.
Read it.
