Much of blogging, web 2.0, “social” media uptake has been led by technologists and geeks and quasi-geeks, tho’ the blogging and other related conferences have helped show that some of them are also able to practice some degree or other of interpersonal, social skills.

And, this is a bit of a mirror for where we’ve been, are at and are moving to. Info technology is getting easier, simpler, faster, more integrated .. web apps, web services, inexpensive, etc. The last 30 + years have been mainly about the technology, with a (very) gradually growing emphasis on usability.

Now, doing many things .. making and posting visdeo clips, ditto podcasts, rivch blogging, etc. has become much easier than even 5 years ago.

The next thirty years is all about the sociological and anthropological changes we will and must face as we come to terms with a new set of (hyperlinked and integrated) conditions we humans have never seen before.

Social media is well named in my opinion, because it helps people be or want to be more “social”, more participative, more engaged-in-ineraction, than most of the forms of media wrapped into the term enabled even a short ten years ago.

Much of blogging, web 2.0, “social” media uptake has been led by technologists and geeks and quasi-geeks, tho’ the blogging and other related conferences have helped show that some of them are also able to practice some degree or other of interpersonal, social skills.

And, this is a bit of a mirror for where we’ve been, are at and are moving to. Info technology is getting easier, simpler, faster, more integrated .. web apps, web services, inexpensive, etc. The last 30 + years have been mainly about the technology, with a (very) gradually growing emphasis on usability.

Now, doing many things .. making and posting visdeo clips, ditto podcasts, rivch blogging, etc. has become much easier than even 5 years ago.

The next thirty years is all about the sociological and anthropological changes we will and must face as we come to terms with a new set of (hyperlinked and integrated) conditions we humans have never seen before.

Social media is well named in my opinion, because it helps people be or want to be more “social”, more participative, more engaged-in-ineraction, than most of the forms of media wrapped into the term enabled even a short ten years ago.

That said … I have been playing with the idea that this thing we are talkinig about is not a thing at all but a process. Therefore maybe the term we use to label it should be a verb and not a noun. I first thought of “Media Socialization”, but unfortunately that carries other connotations, so I have switched to the “Socialization of Media”. For me this simply describes the process of what is happening, without applying a label that will soon be out of date or inappropriate.