The Social Age is defined by many changes: some monumental, some subtle, and some as yet unrecognised or denied. Individually, they may not add up to much, but together, they change everything.
We are radically connected, through diverse technologies, in many different spaces (both physical and virtual), and beyond both oversight and control. In itself, that may not mean much, but what it gives us is significant: it enables the reputation economy and hence Social Authority, it carries Authenticity to scale, it powers the rise of Community, it rebalances power between systems, it broadens our spaces of belonging, and our spaces of knowledge, as well as the nature of knowledge itself (becoming increasingly dynamic and distributed, socially validated and diverse).
These things challenge some of the legacy structures of society: the role and need for Organisations themselves, the established structures of religion, of governance, even of security and culture.
But we should not seek certainty too early: we have not transitioned from one state to another: rather we are in transition.
Some of the things that were true, are now no longer true, are fracturing, eroded, or abstracted. But not gone. And some things that were either inconceivable but not common, are now emergent and evolving.
Things like the nature (and specifically the mechanisms) of work and productivity, the spaces of belonging, the nature of social movements and change, the ability to innovate and exploit innovation, the nature of leadership, the ownership and mechanisms of culture, our relationship with both the wild and built environment, and the mechanisms and distribution of fairness.
In my work, i focus on the changes that technology delivers, in the human experience, and hence in our experience of society: as opposed to seeing the technology itself as the thing of primary interest. It’s not that i don’t love a good gadget: it’s simply that our experience of technology is inherently social. Technology changes both how we do things, and conceive things, but both of these features roll back to how we are human.
And it’s a very applied understanding: if the notion of a Social Age is real, then everything has changed or is changing, and that would appear to be borne out by our observations. New types of Organisations, seeking to draw on new types of power, new types of disruption that reshape legacy domains and markets, new expressions of culture and new networks of power, and so on.
Ultimately, what matters is not whether this view is right, but fundamentally whether we choose to leave behind our legacy understanding, which will only trap us in legacy behaviours and mindset. We do not have to be right, but we do need to be in motion.
Context of the Social Age