The 20th Century was Wrong
I love the obviousness of this statement from Lee Bryant. While most (probably not many around here), fight to hold on to the status quo, fight to retain the hierarchies, the efficiencies, the gray of modern business, it's probably good to remember that this is not our natural state, but just something we've grown used to over the last century or so.
"Some people see new social technology and networked culture as dangerous and 'new', and they fall back on their experience of technology and organisational culture in the late Twentieth Century as the 'established' model. Yet, in fact the reverse is true. The Twentieth century took the ideas of the industrial revolution and applied them to people. Mass production. Mass marketing. Mass slaughter.
If you look at a longer timeframe, you will see that our new era of social technology and social business is in fact more traditional, and continues very old, resilient models of network-based trade, business and socialisation. The difference is, we now have the technology and infrastructure (and arguably the globalised world) that enables us to scale up these old ways of working to support our modern life."
Sort of reminds me of the traditional marriage debate. But something tells me you'd rather avoid that rant...
photo via vw-busman