Found via Wealth Bondage. Actually, this piece is from Scott Rosenberg – responding to comments by Tim while they were both at the Supernova conference.
In later comments on Scott’s piece, Tim agrees with him about the likelihood that there won’t be much uptake of blogs, or humanizing activities, going on in large-ish organizations.
I’m disappointed, I think – because sadly, I think they are right. And, I think corporations have such an opportunity to become more human in an era of surround-sense technology. When it comes to money, power, ego … that kind of stuff … organizations do funny things to people. Heck, you don’t even need organizations .. people do funny things to people.
The only possible alternative scenario I can imagine that doesn’t suppress blogging and human voice and dialogue involves the effects of late-stage capitalism and hierarchical power becoming so distorted that it collapses in some way. And, if this happens, combined with digital interconnectedness being second nature to all those currently under 30 (plus or minus), perhaps some sort of important movement will come to life, with effects such as it becoming clear that being in small groups and working together can become a widespread acceptable substitute for a “job”.
This may be a possible result of the widespread use of blogging in schools – if a critical mass gets used to doing it and find it much more effective than email or other forms of semi-pernmanent communication (not evaporating, as phone conversations and IM do). Maybe there will be some impetus, or overwhelming demonstration of its greater effectiveness. Maybe.
And then there’s Open Source – of which I know little. Perhaps that’s a wild card that will have more effect than just in technology. See Tom Matrullo’s pice on real-time, real-life peer-to-peer sharing and collaboration in the area of hip hop music. An early weak signal ?
If it becomes clear that on this planet we must share and collaborate to survive, and that capitalism and organizations as we know them today are counter-productive .. who knows ?
Blogs, Bosses and Bucks
I had a good time yesterday at Supernova, but it seemed that one of the points I made on our panel caused some consternation among some listeners, so let’s look at it.
I had heard a certain amount of what I thought was wildly overoptimistic forecasting of the widespread adoption of blogging as a tool in corporate America. For instance, Tim Bray said: “Any corporation that doesn’t do this in the future is going to be playing catch-up. They can use the technology to make the enterprise provide a more human face to world.” (I copied this quote from a trade journal article on the conference and promptly lost the URL. Sorry. I wasn’t taking notes myself so if it’s wrong, apologies in advance.)
I agree with Tim and the other optimists that blogging can give enterprises a more human face. But will they let it?
What I said yesterday is that I thought the successes to date in public blogging by software developers at places like Microsoft and Sun weren’t likely to be duplicated in other, more traditional corporations any time soon. Software professionals are relatively unique in feeling that (a) their talents are in demand and (b) if they get fired from one job they can probably (except maybe at the very bottom of an economic cycle) get another one pretty easily. In other words, they feel more empowered to spout off on their blogs without fearing for their livelihood than the typical American worker does.
I’m not sure why, but Tim seemed to take this comment to mean that I thought that people in other fields — I think he mentioned construction, it’s hard to remember — wouldn’t succeed as bloggers because they’re “not as interesting.” Of course, that’s not what I said, and it’s precisely the opposite of what I think. Everyone has stories to tell, and everyone’s stories are worth telling: that’s a credo of the digital storytelling movement that I’ve been involved with for a decade now.
The stories that programmers are telling in the current explosion of blogs have given their work a vital new visibility; as developers tell their stories to each other, creating a pool of technical, practical and philosophical knowledge, they are also giving the public a new and fascinating window onto their discipline. (I’m as aware of this as anyone — my work on my book is infinitely easier thanks to the profusion of programming blogs.)
Do I think it would be a Good Thing for this pattern to be duplicated in other fields? Of course — and it’s happening in some, predictably in those areas where individual professionals have a tradition of independence (the legal world, academia).
But the utopian vision of blogging somehow flattening corporate hierarchies and allowing Cluetrain-like voices of authenticity to trumpet forth from every Fortune 500 headquarters? Maybe it’s possible on the sort of time scale that Supernova keynoter Tom Malone talked about — from hunter-gatherers to agriculture, that sort of thing. But I don’t think it’s going to happen in our lifetimes.
I’m sorry to be the pessimist at the party. But for large numbers of workers in America, particularly those at big companies, the dominant fact of life remains don’t piss off your boss. And, in an era of health-insurance lock-in and easy outsourcing and offshoring, many U.S. workers remain doubtful that they can simply waltz into a new job should their activities displease the current hierarchy to which they report. So the odds of them feeling at ease publishing honest Web sites about their work lives are extremely poor. The blogs you’re going to see from within most traditional companies will be either uninformative snoozes or desperate attempts at butt-covering and -kissing. Not because people don’t have great stories to tell — but because telling the truth has too high a cost.
Someone at Supernova got up and said that he worked in investment banking and thought it was a field that was ripe for blogging. No doubt! I’m assuming that your typical investment banker has managed to sock away some private unemployment insurance cash (also known in some industries as “fuck you” money, something Dick Cheney apparently has in abundance).
For those with such resources, blog on! For those lucky enough to work for a company that says “blog on” and means it, cherish your luck. But for most of the rest of the working population, the blogging revolution will be happening in some other office.
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