You are learning how to program information using new languages that have yet to be written. You might not be building the next spreadsheet software, or the next Internet browser, but I think that what you’re building might have more impact than previous software. As we learn to navigate social networks and make media, I believe we are crafting a language that will execute complex requests, deliver information back and forth between vast and distributed databases, and will overlay the way business is being done in the future.
Seeds for the Conversation
I spend time in bookstores. Sometimes, I compile lists of books I want to read. Other times, I read portions or complete selections of books.
Last night, I read The Big Switch, Nicholas Carr’s book describing how companies like Amazon and Google have paved the way for “utility computing.” The basic premise is that electricity in the 1900s went from being generated on site to being generated centrally, and that businesses stopped having to understand power generation and could thus focus on their business. Carr says companies like Amazon, with their S3 storage and their EC2 computers, and Google with search, Docs, and other apps, are letting us focus on programs instead of the gear. That’s the first seed.
Mixed into my thinking as well are an essay or two out of Hackers and Painters by Paul Graham (which talks about big ideas from the computing age), and also Everything Is Miscellaneous by David Weinberger, about how we’re learning to sort and organize information in ways different than the previous centuries of methodology.
Graham had an essay explaining programming languages, and especially how most programming languages people were learning these days were far abstracted from what computers need to know to do what they do. So that’s one seed. I started realizing that what we’re learning to do in social networks and in making social media like blogs, podcasts, wikis, and in video, is in essence, a programming language.
Weinberger’s book is some of the glue needed for the theory. His ideas are around the notion of how information is stored and retrieved, and relates to my view of our new “databases.”
What are We Learning
If you think about it, we’re learning bits of programming for this new social computing every day. If you understand how to use Twitter, with the @s and the Direct Messages, and the flow of conversation, you know a rudimentary “language.” In Facebook, you understand how to read and interpret the News stream, and you know where to seek data to synthesize information. As you learn how to blog, how to link, how to embed other technologies, you learn how to build user interfaces, how to structure queries, and how to generate reports.
What We Can Do
So far, we’re only learning the basics. Heck, we’re WRITING the language, and yet, we are using our social computing language for our own projects. For instance, the Frozen Pea Fund is a project built by threading several social networks together to build a system to help fund a breast cancer funding setup. In other cases, we’re building conversations in Utterz, which might be informal today, but which build themselves into different structures as we learn how to use them.
Most people see social computing as a tool for marketing and PR, but these are just the first rudimentary applications. We can do much more with our skills on social networks, and our ability to make, consume, distribute, and interact with social media.
Where Can We Take This
If we learn how to program in these new languages, and if we understand how to use these new forms of databases, we can learn how to use this type of programming for our business and organizational needs. Watch someone who’s adept at searching eBay and Craigslist for what they’re looking to purchase. Observe someone who knows how to use LinkedIN for more than just surfing business histories.
We are out there, learning. And this isn’t propellerhead stuff. This is understanding real information for real application in the real world. As commonplace as understanding how to use the card swipe at the grocery store, your understanding of these new social computing systems is heading us into an interesting new phase.
Can you see it? Are you with me? Or is this too far a stretch?
The Social Media 100 is a project by Chris Brogan dedicated to writing 100 useful blog posts in a row about the tools, techniques, and strategies behind using social media for your business, your organization, or your own personal interests. Swing by [chrisbrogan.com] for more posts in the series, and if you have topic ideas, feel free to share them, as this is a group project, and your opinion matters.
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