Building Civil Society 2.0
In their report, Public Media 2.0: Dynamic, Engaged Publics[1], Jessica Clark and Patricia Aufderheide describe how “Multiplatform, participatory, and digital, public media 2.0 will be an essential feature of truly democratic public life from here on in.”

Replace “public media 2.0” with “civil society 2.0” and the sentence holds just as true. Social technology, (see box) are transforming many aspects of modern society, from the media to government, from education to business. The third sector is no different. Change is happening and the challenge is to understand not just the nature of the change, but how civil society can embrace and benefit from it.

Clark and Aufderheide describe the landscape we now inhabit:

“Commercial media still dominate the scene, but the people formerly known as the audience are spending less time with older media formats. Many [people] now inhabit a multimedia-saturated environment that spans highly interactive mobile and gaming devices, social networks, chat—and only sometimes television or newspapers. People are dumping land lines for [mobile] phones and watching movies and TV shows on their computers. While broadcast still reaches more people, the Internet (whether accessed through phones, laptops, or multimedia entertainment devices) has become a mass medium.”’

At the same time, trust in — government, business and the media, and in traditional information sources — is low and often declining, according to the Edelman Trust Barometer Survey 2009 [2]. Trust in the media has suffered the most, but trust in other sources, such as business analysts, press releases and company CEOs is also low/declining, with respondents needing to see information three to five times before it is deemed credible. Whilst NGOs are trusted slightly than other types of organisation, they are not bucking the trend towards mistrust.

In order to combat mistrust, Edelman recommend — and this applies as much to the third sector as to business — that, “Organizations must be forthright and honest in their actions and communications.” And when problems occur “stakeholders need to see senior executives take a visible lead in acknowledging errors, correcting mistakes, and working with employees to avoid similar problems going forward.”

The combination of a fragmented media and a decrease in trust suggest that the future may not be so rosy for civil society. Organisations will find it harder to:

* Move from broadcast model to a conversational model to form and maintain relationships with the audience.
* Become transparent about the way that the organisation works.
* Put participation at the centre of their web strategy.

For some civil society associations, this implies a profound shift in organisational culture. But the price of such a shift is a small one to pay compared to the risks of failing to engage with social technology. In a world where everyone else is talking, keeping quiet is the first step on the way to irrelevance. Publisher Tim O’Reilly once observed that, “Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy” [3]. For civil society associations, obscurity is a far greater threat than letting go of control.

Yet Outsell’s report, CEO Topics — Social Communities & Expert Networks [4] , as quoted in Michael Collins’ Memcom 09 presentation [5], warns that despite associations being “the poster child of communities”, bringing together as they do people with common interests, “their absence form the community phenomenon and their seeming inability to move their offline communities online into vibrant digital communities is stark. Associations… stand to lose… their very reason for being if they cannot move their professionals into digital environments.”

The role of social technology in civil society
People have been congregating in online social spaces, such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Flickr for years. But these tools are not just being used for day-to-day socialising and content sharing, they are also being used as news filters, platforms for collaboration, and places to organise activism. Information and requests for action can ripple quickly through such networks as people forward on interesting or important messages to their peers.

Civil society associations, by using social tools, can extend the reach of their web presence and the strength of their network, and form direct relationships with the individuals in their constituency. Social tools can also provide website visitors with something immediate to do, even if it is a small action. Establishing these one-to-one relationships and facilitating immediate action both increase engagement, which in turn increases the likelihood that the member/supporter will become a more active and valuable participant in the community.

The Association Social Technologies report [6] draws on the report The Decision to Join by ASEA & The Center for Association Leadership [7] which showed that “the extent to which a member is engaged in their membership association is tightly correlated to their likelihood to renew their membership and to talk to friends and colleagues about their association. [And] the number one way members first learn about their membership association is from another member.”

They go on to say that even a “small improvement in member engagement should reliably produce an increase in membership retention rates”, which will in turn improve revenue. Because “research shows that engaged members are more likely to talk to prospective members about their association” it also follows that increased engagement will not just improve income from those members, but increase income from new members too.

Further more, if member engagement alone isn’t enough to encourage organisations to engage with social media, then the more direct effects of increasing merchandise sales, conference registration and other such transactions should help organisations realise the benefits of an investment in social technology.

Increasingly, people want direct involvement in civil society, rather than action by proxy, and social tools can help them experience that direct involvement. That may mean that they want to be a part of an active community, rather than a passive individual isolated from their fellow supporters. Civil society associations can use social tools to provide an environment for conversation, whether that’s on a blog or a social network or on Twitter, which will then allow a vibrant community to grow.

Social media allows individuals to easily come together to discuss and solve shared problems. Associations can either tap into that, facilitating self-organisation that benefits the association, or can ignore it. But if they do ignore the opportunity provided by the internet to engender collective action, they risk sidelining themselves as individuals bypass existing organisations and structures to achieve their goals.

Challenges to using social technologies
It would be foolish not to recognise and address the challenges posed by social technologies. The main challenge is cultural. Social spaces online each have their own culture and unwritten code of conduct. Often, behaviours that are acceptable in a PR or marketing context are not acceptable in a social media context, so care must be taken to understand the culture before engaging with the tools.

Resourcing is also a potential problem. Social media can be time consuming, and has to be worked into employee’s work schedules in a way that guarantees the time and freedom to engage fully.

Social technology changes constantly, so engaging with it has to be an ongoing process of discovery and learning. It’s not a one-off project, but a permanent change to the way the organisation communicates, collaborates and thinks.

These challenges can, however, be overcome and should not pose significant problems for associations that wish to engage with social technologies.

[1] http://futureofpublicmedia.net
[2] http://www.edelman.co.uk/files/trust-barometer-2009.pdf
[3] http://www.openp2p.com/lpt/a/3015
[4] http://www.outsellinc.com/store/products/734
[5] get citation
[6] http://www.principledinnovation.com/bigideas/socialtechsurveysummary/
[7] http://www.asaecenter.org/Marketplace/BookstoreDetail.cfm?ItemNumber=26918

What stops civil society associations using social media? It is easy to point the finger at a lack of technical understanding, or a paucity of time and budget. But whilst these are all genuine concerns, they are all relatively simple to address if organisations decide to do so.

Resistance to new technology by upper management is a pernicious problem. Talking to civil society associations and reading comments left on the survey shows that for many organisations, conservative attitudes amongst management and trustees stifles the use of social technologies. A web developer for one large organisation, when discussing possible uses of social media, responded, “The trustees would never go for that.”

Michael Collins, in his presentation Social Networking — Threat or opportunity for membership organisations? given to Memcom 09 [1] , identified these “internal threats” when examining the reasons why associations aren’t engaging with social media:

* “Complacency, apathy, indecision, fear of change and losing control”
* “Myopia re ROI”
* “Inadequate consultation with community members”

From the comments left on the survey, lack of knowledge and understanding, is a key problem:

“Lack of knowledge in the upper levels of the organisation tends to hold us back sometimes.”
“We have an ‘older’ age range of staff, who are focused on service provision. Many don’t understand, or have time to learn about the net.”
“[There’s] not much understanding that social media is not the same as mass publicity that the ‘comms’ team can just do by themselves.”
“We are just beginning to expand on usage, and I am doing my best to educate my management team.”

And out-dated attitudes seemed to be behind another comment from the survey:

“Current policies seem to have been made years ago.”

A further problem identified by the manager of one medium-sized association’s website was resistance to change:

“The culture of [our organisation] leads its communications efforts in many ways and it’s not based on evidence, or knowledge of the marketplace or the audience. It’s ‘This is the way we’ve always done things’. When push comes to shove we tend to revert back to instinct, revert back to assumptions.”

But although getting managers and trustees to recognise the value of social media might be hard, it doesn’t necessarily mean that using social media is impossible in those environments, just difficult:

“I have struggled to get buy-in from management, but have had success with what I have been able to do.”

The importance of an internal culture which is open to new ways of doing things must not, however, be underestimated. In their report Discover, Argument and Action: How civil society responds to changing needs, Julie Caulier-Rice, Geoff Mulgan and Dan Vale discuss how civil society associations “can sometimes become frozen around past needs rather than current ones.” [2] Although Caulier-Rice et al were not directly discussing civil society association’s attitudes towards technology, their words are just as applicable in this context.

Those who oversee civil society associations must ensure that the culture they create within their organisation is one that is open to new ideas, new technologies and experimentation. Failure to do so will not only hobble staff in their efforts to communicate, collaborate and engage their community, it will also hold the organisation as a whole back. Organisations unable to use the internet to its fullest capability risk being sidelined by others who understand how to use social technologies to spread their message, and unite and organise their supporters.

[1] get citation
[2] http://www.youngfoundation.org.uk/publications/reports/discovery-argument-action-how-civil-society-responds-changing-needs-march-2008

I’m now going to post the re-written version for further comment. If there’s one thing in the report that has to be right, it’s this bit, so I encourage you to leave comments even about the smallest thing. Am I missing anything important? Am I communicating these points clearly? Am I going into too much detail? Or not enough? Please let me know!

Skills and training
It is widely recognised amongst social media experts that social media is experiential in nature: It is difficult to fully understand social tools until one has participated and experienced them for oneself. Non-users can therefore find it difficult to understand the benefits of a given tool until they have spent time using it and have genuinely engaged with the community.

Unlike basic computing skills, such as word processing or spreadsheet manipulation, the core understanding required to make good use of social technologies is cultural, not procedural. Social tools are generally very simple to use. It is a trivial task to set up a Twitter, Flickr or Facebook account, or to create a blog on a free service such as Typepad or Wordpress. Using those tools to engage with the public in a meaningful way requires more than just understanding how to publish an update or upload a picture; rather it requires gaining an insight into the motivations, behavioural norms and expectations that make up each tool’s sub-culture.

Government must, therefore, carefully consider its digital media literacy programmes: To create an effective programme requires expertise in the cultural analysis of social media, not just a technical understanding. By focusing specifically on social media and its culture as part of a wider digital media literacy programme, the Government could both improve digital inclusion, and empower individuals to take part in activities online that would improve their social inclusion.

But if social media is sidelined or treated as equivalent to non-interactive digital behaviours, such as sending and receiving email, there is a significant risk of creating a false sense of action and understanding. The consequences of a scenario in which organisations have been inadequately trained in the use of social media could be very serious.

The PR space is littered with examples of companies who failed to understand the social media culture into which they moving, and who thus made faux pas that damaged their brand and, in some cases, had detrimental effects on their profits. One recent example was when the home furnishings store Habitat started spamming Twitter with inappropriate messages promoting its spring catalogue [1]. Because Habitat had not taken the time to understand what behaviours were acceptable on Twitter, it alienated potential customers by inserting marketing messages into conversations that Twitter users were having about issues such as the Iranian elections.

Any social technology skills programmes needs to be organised in partnership with existing social media communities, such as the Tuttle Club [2] and experienced practitioners, who may exist outside of the Government’s and the third sector’s usual constituencies. This work also needs to be done “out in the open”, in public view, so that anyone with relevant knowledge and interest can help shape the training materials. Tapping into the wider community like this will help ensure that training programmes do not just include essential cultural information, but are also flexible and adaptable in the face of what is a rapidly changing set of technologies.

Recommendations for social technology skills development
For Government
* Experienced social media practitioners should be an integral part of any digital media literacy or digital inclusion programme, and should be included in consultations and in steering groups.
* All governmental and allied groups working on digital media literacy and digital inclusion projects should adopt social media for internal collaboration and external consultation and conversation, so that all those involved have first hand experience of the tools and their culture(s).
* Centres of excellence in social media, whether community-organised, in business or in academia, should be identified, recognised and supported.

For Funding Organisations
* Funds should be set aside for cross-sector social media training, coaching and mentoring, and the creation of free/open source training materials, case studies, and other resources. Such projects should be led from within the social technologies community.
* Funding organisations should also adopt social media internally for collaboration and externally for communication as a matter of course, so that they become better equipped to understand social media projects.
* Additional help should be given to smaller organisations to ensure that they are not excluded from participation.
* Recognition and assistance should be given to informal, ad-hoc civil society groups and the individuals who wish to start one.

For Civil Society Associations
* Associations should earmark funds to pay for ongoing social media awareness training for as many staff as possible, especially trustees/management and those staff ‘at the coal face’.
* Additional training should be focused on those with the right aptitudes, e.g. curiosity, an ability to communicate clearly, and a desire to connect with people. These people can then become social media champions within each organisation.
* Volunteers, supporters and members should also be offered assistance in understanding new social technologies and opportunities to participate in the organisations social media projects.

[1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/2009/jun/22/twitter-advertising
[2] http://tuttleclub.wordpress.com/

General recommendations
Recommendations regarding training and the proliferation of skills through the third sector and public are addressed in the above section. There are many additional areas that deserve attention, however, and those are listed here.

Recommendations for government and policy makers
* Research into the use of the internet by the British population is fragmented and sporadic. Whilst both Ofcom and the Office for National Statistics produce research in this area, there needs to be one single body, a ‘British Internet Institute’, that carries out original quantitative and qualitative research and meta-analyses [1] of research produced by other bodies in this field. Such an organisation should be entirely independent of the Government and should focus not just on ‘issues of the moment’ but carry out longitudinal studies that will give us clear indications of trends and variations. This would provide data to support not just the third sector and businesses but could also feed into government policy.
* Social media should be embedded into the education system at all levels, from primary all the way through to university and continuing education. Social tools should not just be focused on students, but on empowering educators to share information and collaborate, and to help strengthen the relationship between educators and students’ families. The ICT curriculum also needs to be updated to include social media and associated topics, which may also help drive more general adoption of ICT by young people.
* Social media should become an integral part of government, from local to national levels. Using social technology in government will not just be beneficial from a practical point of view, but will also help spread the skills required to understand the medium amongst those who make policy.

Recommendations for funding organisations
* Grant giving organisations should consider how the projects they fund could be improved by the use of the web, and should encourage organisations to include social technology in their project plans. They should also be willing to specify additional budget to ensure that social media is worked into the fabric of the project, not bolted on as an afterthought.
* Adherence to web standards, particularly regarding accessibility, should be encouraged for all projects with a web component.
* Grants should be given for focused research into the use of social media and the web by civil society association to create a portfolio of case studies and best practices, including ROI, metrics, and resourcing needs.
* Funders should invest in projects that will help build technical capabilities across civil society, e.g. schemes that bring together developers and organisations to work on open source projects which could then be used or adapted by any other organisation.
* It is essential that funders be supportive of experiments and risk-taking. There is no one clear route to social media success, and some projects will not work out as well as hoped. These must not been seen as damning, but as part of a wider learning experience.
* The sharing of experience should be built into project plans, covering both success stories and lessons learned from projects that didn’t work out so well. Full and frank discussion of how social media fits into the civil society agenda is an important way to develop our understanding and future applications.

For civil society assocations
* Ensure that individuals have the resources, especially time, to engage with social technologies.
* Task a person or team within the organisation to learn about and experiment with social technologies on an ongoing basis, and to share their discoveries throughout the organisation.
* Use social tools internally for collaboration and communications. Blogs, wikis and social bookmarking tools are particularly useful in an internal context.
* Focus on a small number of tools, and choose ones that can be most easily fitted into existing work schedules. Understand the limitations of your resources and don’t try to do too much.
* Work with external consultants and mentors who can advise on strategy and implementation. Whilst the tools might be easy to use, using them well can be harder.
* Share success stories, lessons, problems and knowledge both internally across the organisation but also externally with other organisations. Sharing knowledge with others will encourage reciprocation, create goodwill and help everyone involved.
* Engage with social media communities outside of the third sector, for example, attend events focused on social media. There are many small, free, informal events, so it’s not just about expensive conferences.
* Let individuals’ personalities come through. Social media is not a form of corporate communication, but a one-to-one conversation so it’s essential to let people be themselves.
* Don’t just focus on younger members of staff. Having a talent for social media is all about one’s mindset, not age or technological history. Older members of staff can take to social tools like ducks to water just as much as their younger counterparts.
* Ensure there is space for dissent, and that it is evaluated honestly and fairly, and fed back into the process.

[1] The use of statistical techniques to review and combine the results of several different studies.

The more I look at the phrase ‘digital literacy’, and the baggage that comes with it, the less happy I am using it in a recommendation. There is no doubt in my mind that we do need to spread the skills that will allow people to engage online more often and more effectively, but how do we best do that? Asking government to do it just fills me with the screaming heebie jeebies. Asking academia to do it, or the usual set of skills agencies to get involved also fills me with fear. Why? Because with social media, there is a lot to be lost in translation and the people at the centre of pass on social media skills should be the people who actually have them, not people who’ve watched others use the tools and think that they thus know how they work.

Social media is experiential, and what we need, I think, are ways to draw more people into having those experiences and participating in existing social media communities.

I’d be very, very keen to hear other people’s thoughts and opinions on this. What should we do to help people understand and make best use of social tools? Indeed, should we do anything?

Here is my list of recommendations. Feel free to comment on those too. I’m not entirely sure that they are categories correctly yet, nor that I’ve not missed something really important, (or included unimportant things) so feel free to dig in and give me robust feedback.

For organisations

* Provide basic digital literacy training for staff that need it. There are many other sectors, e.g. education, where increasing digital literacy is a stated goal, so there is expertise to be drawn on.
* Provide general social media training for as many staff as possible. Social media talent can spring from anywhere and successful organisations encourage all staff members to be involved.
* Find staff who have the right aptitudes, such as curiosity, an ability to communicate clearly, and a desire to connect with people, and train them further to become the organisation’s social media evangelists. These people may come from anywhere within the organisation and associations should not simply look to the marcomm function.
* Draw talent from supporters/volunteers, many of whom may have the skills that are required.
* Ensure budget is set aside to support social media projects, training and resources.
* Task a person or team within the organisation to learn about and experiment with social technologies.
* Focus on a small number of tools, and choose ones that can be most easily fitted into existing work schedules. Understand the limitations of your resources and don’t try to do too much.
* Work with external consultants and mentors who can advise on strategy and implementation. Whilst the tools might be easy to use, using them well can be harder.
* Use social tools internally for collaboration and communications. Blogs, wikis and social bookmarking tools are particularly useful in an internal context.
* Share success stories, lessons, problems and knowledge both internally across the organisation but also externally with other organisations. Sharing knowledge with others will encourage reciprocation, create goodwill and help everyone involved.
* Engage with social media communities outside of the third sector, for example, attend events focused on social media. There are many small, free, informal events, so it’s not just about expensive conferences.
* Let individuals’ personalities come through. Social media is not a form of corporate communication, but a one-to-one conversation so it’s essential to let people be themselves.
* Don’t just focus on younger members of staff. Having a talent for social media is all about one’s mindset, not age or technological history. Older members of staff can take to social tools like ducks to water just as much as their younger counterparts.
* Ensure there is space for dissent, and that it is evaluated honestly and fairly, and fed back into the process.

For policy makers/government

* Help should be given to smaller organisations — both financial and advice in the form of free mentoring, workshops, information packs etc. — to ensure that they develop the web skills required to see them through the next 15 years.
* Wider help should be given to civil society associations to ensure that web standards, particularly for accessibility, are understood and met.
* A project to develop applications and tools specifically for the third sector should be considered, as many associations will not have the capability to develop applications themselves.
* The technical capacity of civil society associations should be enhanced by schemes that bring together developers and organisations to work on open source projects which could then be used and adapted by any organisation.
* There should also be an evangelist-mentor programme that reaches out to organisations and helps them to understand what social media could do for them.
* Ongoing research focused on the use of technology and social media by the British population, similar to the Pew Internet Institute in the United States.

For funding organisations

* Grant giving organisations should consider how the projects they fund could be improved by the use of the web, and should encourage organisations to include social technology in their project plans. They should also be willing to specify additional budget to ensure that social media is worked into the fabric of the project, not bolted on as an afterthought.
* There should be more research into the use of social media and the web by civil society association to create a portfolio of case studies and best practices. Examine ROI, metrics, resourcing needs (social media can be resource-intensive but just how intensive is poorly understood).
* Invest in projects that will help build technical capabilities within civil society; not necessarily so that they can execute themselves, but so that they can understand the issues and make informed decisions about social technology based on evidence rather than assumption.
* Insist on web standards being adopted and met.
* Fund experiments and be supportive of risk-taking.
* Examine the needs of civil society and fund work on additions to existing open source software projects that could meet those needs. Specialist tools are unlikely to be required and OSS should be supported whenever possible.

Anyway, as usual, please do feel free to critique and comment.

Myths of age and digital capability
There are two common assumptions about the relationship between age and technical competency that rear their heads whenever the internet is discussed. The first assumption is that young people have a natural affinity for technology and both understand and use it in ways that older people cannot. The second is that anyone over the age of 60 is not only technically incompetent but also uninterested in the internet, using it only under protest.

Both of these assumptions are flawed, yet have worked their way firmly into the public consciousness. Because they seem like ‘common sense’, these concepts are spread by policy makers, the media and technology companies alike. But if civil society associations take them at face value, they risk forming strategies and policies that are as flawed as the assumptions they are based on.

The ‘Digital Natives’
Marc Prensky, technologist and educationalist, coined the term ‘digital native’ in 2001 to refer to today’s students, born after 1980, whom he sees as radically different from both their predecessors and their teachers/professors. He characterises them as “native speakers of technology, fluent in the digital language of computers, video games, and the Internet” [1] and compares them with their elders, the ‘digital immigrants’ who may use technology, but who “still have one foot in the past.”

Prensky’s is not a lone voice, nor is his the first to characterise young people as being computer naturals — that meme has been spreading throughout society since the 1970, but has become particularly prevalent over the last ten years. It is predicated on the idea that there is a clear divide between generations, and that these new characteristics, ascribed to the young, are so new that not only are their elders incapable of developing those skills, they can’t even comprehend them.

As well as having a natural affinity for technology, ‘digital natives’ — aka the ‘net generation’ or ‘millenials’ — are also supposed to be “optimistic team-oriented achievers” and “active experiential learners, proficient in multi-tasking” [2]. Yet a review of the evidence shows the truth to be much more complex than the words of Prensky and his peers would lead one to believe. In reality, competency with technology varies, along with access and interest.

Neil Selwyn, in his paper The Digital Native — Myth and Reality, says:

“[T]here is mounting evidence that many young people’s actual uses of digital technologies remain rather more limited in scope than the digital native rhetoric would suggest. Surveys of adolescents’ technology use, for example, show a predominance of game playing, text messaging and retrieval of online content (as evidenced in the popularity of viewing content on YouTube, Bebo and MySpace).” [3]

Young people are also more passive than the digital native description would imply and “often display a limited ability to successfully use the internet and other research tools” [4]. Studies of American students found that the most common activities were word processing, emailing and accessing the internet for pleasure. Only a minority of students actively created their own content or used emerging technologies such as blogs, social networking and podcasts. And a significant proportion of them had lower levels of technical competency than would be expected of ‘digital natives’. [5]

Research shows that access to technology is strongly influenced by a number of factors, including socio-economic status, social class, gender and geography [6], as well as their school and home background and their family dynamics. And studies from Europe and North America show that rural youth, females and those whose parents have low levels of education are more likely to suffer from digital exclusion [7].

Furthermore, digital exclusion isn’t always involuntary. danah boyd’s study of teenagers on MySpace discovered “two types of non-participants: disenfranchised teens and conscientious objectors.” The former group have no internet access, have been banned by their parents, or can only access the internet through public terminals where sites like MySpace are banned. Conscientious objectors include “politically minded teens who wish to protest against Murdoch’s News Corp. (the corporate owner of MySpace)” as well as obedient teens who respect their parents’ bans, teens who feel socially alienated from their online peers, or who just think they are too cool for MySpace. [8]

The concept of the digital native is, then, an artificial construction, rather than a description of reality. Selwyn says:

“Whilst often compelling and persuasive, the overall tenor and tone of these discursive constructions of young people and technology tend towards exaggeration and inconsistency. The digital native discourse as articulated currently cannot be said to provide an especially accurate or objective account of young people and technology.”

A conclusion with which Bennett et al. agree:

“[T]hese assertions are put forward with limited empirical evidence … or supported by anecdotes and appeals to common-sense beliefs.” [9]
Harvard’s John Palfrey, co-author of the book Born Digital, explains why the term ‘digital native’ should not be used to describe a particular generation:

“Not all people born during a certain period of history […] are Digital Natives. Not everyone born today lives a life that is digital in every, or indeed any, way.”

Furthermore “Not all of the people who have the character traits of Digital Natives are young. [Some people] over a certain age […] live digital lives in as many ways, if not more, than many Digital Natives. Many of us have been here as the whole digital age has come about, and many of our colleagues have participated in making it happen in lots and lots of crucial ways.” [10]

The ‘Silver Surfer’
Similar mythology has grown up around internet users of retirement age. The common perception of the over-50s, and in particular the over-60s, is that they are technically incapable and uninterested in the internet. Indeed, the phrase ‘silver surfer’ brings to mind the idea of a white-haired old lady prodding at the computer with a single finger as if it might bite. But this image, however evocative it may be, diminishes the role that the internet plays in the lives of older people, and the influence they have on the internet itself.

Nielsen, Hitwise and OfCom all predict an increase in use of the internet by the 55+ age group, with predictions averaging at a 20% increase [11]. The 55+ age group are using the internet more frequently, with the 65+ age group also increasing useage (although their overall usage is lower than that of the younger cohort). [12]

A 2007 OfCom report shows that 16% of over-65s use the web, spending 42 hours per month on the web, compared to 37.9 hours spent by 18-24s, and only 24.9 hours spent by 12-17 year olds [13]. Indeed, the over-65s are spending more time online than any of the other age groups in the survey.

An Axa survey finds that “using the internet is the preferred hobby of pensioners”, over DIY/gardening and travel. Furthermore, 88% of pensioners who use the internet “chat regularly with friends and family” and are “embracing the web to enhance their social lives and keep in touch with family”.
So older people are engaging with the internet, increasingly so, but are they using social tools?

The average ages of social sites is surprising: YouTube (34.4), Facebook (34.6 years) [14], Friends Reunited (43.8) and Saga Zone (62) [15]. Indeed, almost as many in the over 55 age group use Facebook globally as in the 25-34 age group. Not only are these sites not just the preserve of the teens and twenty-somethings, as is often assumed, but pensioners will actively engage with sites such as Saga Zone that are relevant to their interests.
Kathryn Corrick concluded from this and other data that:

“Baby boomers and ‘silver surfers’ are not averse to digital technology. Their motivations for going online are the similar as other generations: socialising, communication , learning, sharing, shopping, bargain hunting, organising. Like all other ages groups usage of all digital media is rapidly increasing. [And it] is no longer a matter of what kind of sites/services this demographic are not using, rather which ones are they using more than others.” [16]

Another part of the mythology surrounding silver surfers is that they lack confidence with technology. Whilst this is undoubtedly true of some, a recent Ofcom study, [17] found that lack of interest was a more important problem than lack of confidence.

When asked how confident they were in finding what they want on the internet, 78% of the 60+ age group were very or fairly confident, and 14% were not very or not at all confident, compared to 91% and 5% of all adults aged 16 or over. When asked about their confidence in using “creative elements that media such as the internet and mobile phones offer”, 44% said they were very or fairly confident, and 44% were not very or not at all confident, compared to 66% and 25% for the 16+ group. So whilst older people are less confident, their overall confidence levels are actually very respectable.

Regarding the creative elements of the internet, such as uploading photos or commenting on blogs, overall interest levels in both 16+ and 60+ groups were very low. Of adults aged 60+, 42% have either uploaded or are interested in uploading photos to the internet, but 56% are not interested, compared to 61% and 39% for all adults aged 16+. And only 18% of the 60+ age group either have or are interested in commenting on someone else’s blog, with 82% not interested, compared to 29% and 69% for all adults over 16.

Ofcoms figures are, however, problematic, because they do not split out different age groups to give a clearer picture of how popular activities are within different age ranges, lumping the entire adult population together as 16+, and comparing that to the 60+ group. Other parts of research, e.g. questions about use of advanced mobile phone functions, show that the 70+ age group is consistently less interested and less confident with technology than those aged 60-69, and their responses will therefore pull down the figures for the 60-69 age group (moreso than they do the 16+ age group). There was no data for the 50-59 age group, which (can) also form a section of the ‘silver surfer’ demographic group.

The question of interest, rather than confidence, being a key reason for the lack of engagement by older people is to be expected given that the main demographic targeted by most websites are the 18-35s, who are perceived to have the greatest engagement with the web and also the greatest disposable income.

Ramifications for civil society associations
These finding show that age is not a reliable predictor of interest, capability, confidence or engagement with technology in general, or social media in particular. Whether civil society associations are looking for technically competent staff or volunteers to work on their web presence and use of social media tools, or whether they are assessing the potential reach within their target audience that such tools may have, they must do so with an open mind.

When considering hiring staff or recruiting volunteers, organisations must firstly remember that not all ‘youngsters’ are automatically competent with technology. Although many teens and young adults use social tools in their personal lives, they may not have the necessary perspective to transfer those skills to a different context, such as a professional or volunteering context. Conversely, the over-30s may have a deeper understanding of technology and a broader capability to apply that knowledge in a novel context.

However, it must be emphasised that with social media, it is mindset not skill set that is important. The right people will be curious about technology, eager to experiment, will understand how interpersonal relationships develop, will be good communicators and will have a solid understanding of their community’s culture. Such skills can be found in people of any age.

Equally, when formulating web strategies, it is important not to assume older people, whether you define that as 50+ or 60+, are absent from the web. Whilst there is room for improvement in the number of over-50s online and their confidence levels, the cart should not be put before the horse. A lack of content relevant to that age-group would naturally result in fewer of them engaging with the internet. An increase in relevant content, whether that’s in the traditional sense of information and media or whether it is social websites aimed specifically at older people and where they can create and share their own content, could be expected to increase engagement in the 50+ age group.

This should be good news for civil society organisations, especially those focusing on older people, as the indicators are that there are many opportunities for them to reach out and engage with the over-50s digitally by providing them with a reason to learn more about technology. Given our ageing population, engagement with the 50+ age group should be a key consideration for all civil society associations.

Finally, it must be emphasised that the terms ‘digital native’ and ‘silver surfer’ should not be used as demographic descriptors. Instead, it is preferable to talk in terms of level and type of digital engagement, and to recognise that these vary within all age groups.

Please note that these references aren’t complete! If you happen to have any of them to hand, let me know.

[1] http://www.ascd.org/authors/ed_lead/el200512_prensky.html
[2] (Bennett et al)
[3] The digital native — myth and reality, Neil Welwyn, March 2009
[4] (Williams and Rowlands 2007)
[5] (Sue Bennett, Karl Maton and Lisa Kervin, in their paper The Digital Natives Debate: A critical review of the evidence)
[6] (Golding 200)
[7] (Vandewater et al. 2007, Looker and Thiessen 2003)
[8] {boyd, 2007, MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Learning, Youth, Identity, and Digital Media Volume}
[9] (Bennett et al.)
[10] (Palfrey, get citation)
[11] (find citations)
[12] (National Statistics – Internet Access Report August 2007)
[13] (OfCom 2007 - find citation)
[14] (Nielsen Online, UK NetView, home & work data, including applications, October 200&)
[15] (CIM Presentation 2007)
[16] (http://kathryncorrick.co.uk/2009/06/17/wither-the-silver-surfer/)
[17] (Ofcom, Digial Lifestyles, Adults aged 60 and over, 14 May 2009)

You can, if you wish, read the section here and leave your comments as per usual at the bottom. I am, however, also putting it into BookOven for paragraph by paragraph annotation. (That’s a nice collisions of clients!) If you want to be able to comment at a paragraph level, please email me and I will send you an invitation to the site (we’re still in private alpha).

I’m particularly interested in any references you have that either support or rebut my points - many of these were arrived at through interview and workshop, and if there’s something that it’s hard to do, it’s to reference stuff that’s come out of other people’s brains like this whilst simultaneously being imaginative and trying to guess what might happen in 15 years! My schedule makes it a tough job to fully reference everything, so any help you can give would be much appreciated.

I look forward to your comments.

Introduction
The question of what the next 15 years holds for social media, and the organisations who use it, is a difficult one to answer. Looking back 15 years to 1994 gives us some idea of the difficulties of predicting how technology will develop over such a long time span. In 1994, email was mainly used by academics and technology specialists and only just starting to find wider adoption in business. The web was four years old and beginning to show hints of its future potential. Connections to the internet were made via dial-up modems which ran at speeds of 14.4 or 28.8 kbit/s (compared to connection speeds now of 8 mbit/s or higher). It would have been an unusually prescient person who predicted the rise of blogs at a time when sites were often hand-coded, page by page, in HTML; or the popularity of YouTube at a time when transferring even a highly compressed video clip would have taken hours.

But this section of the report does not aim to make predictions about the nature of social media in 2025. Instead, it aims to examine possible trends and drivers of change that could affect social media, and to use that information to create potential scenarios that provoke the question “What if…?”. This ‘futures thinking’ or ‘scenario thinking’ is intended to help organisations “understand and manage uncertainties and ambiguities”, by helping them to imagine how their organisation would cope if any of these scenarios came to pass.

The technologists consulted for this report all agreed that it was difficult to imagine the web in 2025, but that there were trends which will almost certainly make themselves felt in the way that social technology evolves. The drivers of change and scenarios reported below have been developed through interviews and workshops with technologists, social media experts and third sector practitioners. They are not exhaustive, just meant to provide a scaffold around which individuals and organisations can build their own focused scenarios for the way that they may need to adapt in the present, so that they are better placed to flourish in the future.

Key Drivers of Change
‘Drivers of change’ are the forces acting upon us which shepherd us in a given direction. There are many drivers of change in many different categories that could affect civil society associations. Here we focus on the key forces which may influence the way that social technology develops and the way in which both individuals and third sector associations interact with each other and with technology.

We have divided the drivers of change into three self-explanatory types: predetermined, uncertain and wildcard. This provided a framework within which to think, but we could just as easily have used the PESTLE framework which examines drivers in six subject areas: politics, economy, science, technology, legal and environment.

Predetermined
Predetermined drivers of charge are trends that are either already at play or imminent and countervailing forces are weak or non-existent. For example there is evidence that our population is growing older and no likely scenario that would see that trend reversed.

Increase in number of interpersonal connections.
The number of people that any individual can keep in touch with has been increased by social media. As we reconnect with old friends with whom we have lost contact, and hang on to new friends who we would otherwise have let fall by the wayside, we find ourselves in the midst of larger networks than ever before. The majority of our relationships are weak, made up of business contacts, acquaintances, people we only vaguely know. Our core circle of friends remains small, just 10 to 20 people, but those key relationships last much longer and are less vulnerable to our increasingly peripatetic lifestyles, as we can stay in touch with anyone, anywhere around the world.

Ubiquity of technology and connectivity.
The cost of technology has decreased year-on-year, whilst its capability has increased. Moore’s Law continues to hold true as predicted physical limits for the size and power of processors has been reached and transcended. Increasing power costs has forced manufacturers to focus on efficiency and longevity, so resource scarcity is much less of an issue than predicted just a few years ago. The green movement has changed manufacturers’ emphasis from built-in obsolescence to tech that can easily be serviced or recycled. Computers are more portable and connectivity technologies like 3G or WiMax have consolidated, which has lead to the ubiquitous web. Users really can get online anywhere, 24/7, and everyone, everywhere now has a powerful device in their pocket which is music player, phone and computer all rolled into one.

Social software moves into the mainstream.
Like email before it, social software has now become ubiquitous and essential. Obscure jargon from the turn of the century is now a lingua franca: Everyone knows what blogs, wikis and social networks are, and everyone uses them. Data portability — e.g. being able to move your friends list seamlessly from service to service — has lowered the barriers to entry. Rather than a mishmash of lots of different social networks there is effectively just one, The Social Web, which users access through the interface of their choice. Social media has become embedded into our personal lives, but it has also become a core part of business too, for collaboration and marketing. Organisations without some sort of social media presence find themselves at a significant disadvantage compared to their savvier competitors as consumers base purchasing decisions not just on recommendations from friends but also on judgements of how personable they find company’s representatives in online social environments.

Everything is recorded.
Everything can be and is now recorded, almost as a matter of course. Whilst government’s powers to surveil have been somewhat curtailed by activists’ campaigns, the UK is still the most surveilled country in the world. Technology now allows the capture of almost every type of activity and interaction, and is trivially cheap and easy to use. Individuals routinely record all telephone calls for their own personal archive, as with all their online communications. Organisations of all sorts recognise the importance of attention data, i.e. information about where users are focusing their attention, and regularly collect and mine it for trends and patterns in an attempt to put themselves a step ahead. Archive and search have become core issues for everyone, from mums organising their family’s photo and video archive to charities sorting through their supporter activity database.

Self-organisation.
The ubiquity of technology, connectivity and social tools has made it trivial for citizen groups to self-organise, and a new culture of ad hoc activism has encouraged many more people to get involved in causes close to their heart. Groups coalesce around the issue of the moment; agree on, organise and take action, and then dissipate. Small numbers of committed activists act as a focal point for a wider community that is constantly in flux, and work as organisers, evangelists, moderators, mentors and provocateurs, all rolled into one. The development of a wide range of e-democracy tools, which allow people to take part in activism online, allow many more people to take small actions that, when amplified by the huge reach provided by the internet, results in demonstrable change. Activism isn’t restricted to the political or civic arena; businesses also find themselves in the firing line for socially unacceptable behaviours such as a failure to embrace green thinking or poor customer service.

Demographic inversion.
The population has aged, with more older people than ever before. In some areas of the UK there has been localised demographic inversion, with more people older than retirement age than younger. Overall, the workforce as a percentage of the population has shrunk, and the pressures put on the health, welfare and pension systems bring them close to breaking point. Many pensioners are unable to survive on the meagre state pension, and because of the global economic crisis, even those who saved and invested find themselves short of cash. People who would have retired at 60 or 65 are now searching for work, but ageism makes it hard for them to find additional income. Meanwhile, advances in medicine mean that many diseases of old age are now treatable or even curable, and both life expectancy and health in old age have improved.

Decrease in trust of authority figures and institutions.
The global economic crisis that came to a head in 2008, the British MPs expenses shenanigans of 2009, and accelerating mistrust of the media have resulted in the collapse of faith in authority figures and institutions of all types. People no longer look to self-proclaimed experts and venerable institutions when seeking information, instead relying on their network of peers to recommend and advise. Recommendation engines, such as the one Amazon uses to suggest books to customers, have become commonplace, and the best combine complex algorithms with human judgement to increase reliability. Consolidation of the media market amidst falling ad revenue and an inability to monetise the web has led to an information vacuum which is filled by distributed expertise sites like Wikipedia, which has now become a well-respected and reliable resource.

Green issues become mainstream.
The importance of the environment and climate change are now accepted by the majority of the population as mainstream concerns. Consumers expect business, government and individuals to behave in a environmentally responsible manner, and punish any organisations who do not live up to high standards. Technology is no longer seen as a threat to the environment, but its potential saviour with the Luddism rife in the early part of the century now frowned upon. The intersection of social media and environmentalism has resulted in the positive application of peer pressure to the point where individual action, rather than waiting for government action, is the norm.

Cuts in public services spending and access.
Demographic inversion and an extended recession have significantly damaged government coffers. Taxes on individuals and small to medium sized individuals cannot be raised further without the risk of serious civil unrest, whilst the rich — individuals and institutions — continue to avoid otherwise punishing rates. Government’s only recourse is to cut spending, which means reducing the size of the civil service and cutting services. The first to go are the politically easy targets, such as prison reform or support for drug addicts, followed quickly by science research — particularly the less sexy sciences such as physics and astronomy. As the population ages, the financial demands put on society, and particularly the NHS, increase leading to more vulnerable adults and children being let down by the system and requiring assistance from charitable organisations, who will have to step in to fill the gap left by disintegrating government services.

The Digital Divide becomes a matter of choice.
With the availability of cheap technology and the trend towards multiple-use devices, everyone with a mobile phone now also has a capable computer. The web has become genuinely mobile as sites and services no longer need to create specialised ‘mobile’ versions — all devices can present the internet in a useable manner on small-format devices — although many also provide additional applications that can run on mobile phone operating systems. Telecoms providers continue their habit of giving away handsets to woo consumers into signing contracts, so even the lowest end of the market has access to what were once called ‘smartphones’. Yet still not everyone embraces the web and social media. A percentage of the population class themselves as ‘technological refuseniks’, with no interest in being a part of the web. This is not age-related, as the blossoming of ‘Silver Surfers’ proves, nor is it an economic or class issue. Instead it is related to confidence with technology, digital literacy, and fashion. For some, it’s just not cool to be online.

Uncertain
Uncertain drivers of change are either trends that appear to be reliable at this point, but which could easily be turned around by an unknown force at some point in the future, or ones where the trend could take two very different directions.

Split between inwards-looking individualism and outwards-looking collectivism.
Social tools split into two main categories: inwards-facing sites which encourage people to interact only with pre-approved friends and which create the appearance of privacy; and outwards-facing tools which encourage people to be public in their interactions and prohibiting access only to people who have shown themselves to be bad actors within the group. The illusion of privacy created by the ‘walled gardens’ — whose ‘walls’ are actually more like holey fences — causes problems as users fail to understand that actions they believe are private are actually on view to a much larger group, leading them to act recklessly. People who prefer closed sites also engage less with the rest of the internet and avoid situations where their assumptions and prejudices may be challenged or overturned. More outward looking people are attracted to sites which allow them to stumble upon interesting people and novel ideas, and are much more likely to engage with the wider community.

Experimentation and failure becomes more acceptable.
As the cost of technology decreases and knowledge of how the web functions — on a personal and technological level — spreads, so barriers to entry for participants wanting to experiment with the web are lowered. Third party tools enable organisations to create increasingly sophisticated web presences in multiple arenas without specialist computer programming knowledge. The rapidly expanding freelance technologist market enables companies without in-house specialists to hire in the expertise they need, when they need it, to ensure that they make the best of limited budgets. But the low cost of entry, and the spread of the web’s “fail fast, fail often” culture means that organisations become more relaxed about experimentation and more willing to take risks or venture into unknown territory. Huge budgets no longer hang in the balance, so technological projects are free to evolve, adapting to emergent behaviour rather than attempting to dictate behavioural change.

Wide availability of information leads to either overload or smart/group filters.
More information is available more easily to more people than ever before. Information comes from sources worldwide, and automatic translation has increased the amount of content we can now consume, should we wish. But this flood of information, exacerbated by a lingering mistrust of technology, is too much for many people to handle. Instead of trying to find ways to assess different sources so as to find the most interesting or reliable, people reject the web as an information source and instead refer to their peers for advice and answers. This leads to the easy spread of misinformation, some of which has serious consequences. Yet others have come to rely on smart filters which combine algorithms and human judgement to rate and recommend news and information sources. Loyalty to specific information outlets is a rare anachronism, with people being varied and fickle in their personal news-gathering habits.

Consolidation of the media; rise of community-sourced news.
The failure of the media to find an adequate replacement for falling ad revenues has resulted in many newspapers, magazines, radio stations and even commercial TV channels failing. The BBC’s licence fee is no more and the organisation has had to radically reinvent itself as a commercial venture, a transformation with which it has struggled. The newspapers which are left have focused on commentary over journalism and sensationalism over reportage as a response to drastic budget and staff cuts. Disillusioned with an increasingly shrill and desperate media, the public finally takes to blogging — in a way that the rest of the world did two decades before. Increased transparency at all levels of government, a consequence of government’s attempt to rebuild trust after the scandals of 2009, has made it much easier for people to cover political beats formally only accessible to press pass holders. And there are plenty of out-of-work journalists with the skill and imagination required to create community news ventures that directly compete with their old employers.

Over-regulation of the internet stifles growth, or splits the internet into White/Grey/Black Nets.
What started as an attempt to clamp down on music piracy in the first decade of the century turned into a global effort to rein in the internet and provide a way for governments around the world to control what their citizens and subjects could do online. Over-regulation of the net, including international databases of everyone’s web surfing habits and a policy of instant disconnection for transgressors, has lead to a reduction innovation and development. Businesses cannot now risk investment in a medium that could be shut down at the drop of a hat. Meantime, elite technologists create work-arounds for the automatic control systems imposed by government in an ongoing arms race. The net splits into three: The White Net, which is restricted in scope but legal; the Grey Net, whose legality is dubious, where specialised software hides minor transgressions; and the Black Net, which is illegal to access, but which maintains the freedoms envisioned by the Web’s creators. To all intents and purposes, the White Net becomes useless for businesses and the third sector alike, particularly for organisations campaigning on political and humanitarian issues, forcing them to either abandon the internet or use illegal means to operate on the Black Net.

Multiculturalism leads to either tolerance or increased conflict.
The opening up of the world via the web also improves access to and cross-pollination between different cultures. Whilst some cultures are tolerant and open minded, drawing from the best of the the different world views now accessible online, for others the threat to their lifestyles and beliefs from strangers with contrary views becomes intolerable. For some, making contact with others in radically different cultures from their own is educational, a welcome eye-opener, but for others it merely emphasises how alien they find these distant cultures. Mostly, that alienation comes to nothing, but occasionally it feeds the flames of intolerance which erupts not just online, but offline in the form of increased racially- and religiously-motivated attacks on both personal and international scale.

Flexible, portfolio careers becomes more common.
The concept of a ‘job for life’ died at the end of the last century and has now been replaced with portfolio careers. Recruiters no longer look for long, stable periods of employment with a single organisation, but instead seek to hire people who have had a variety of roles, and show clear progression in their career. Many more people are employed in two or more part-time jobs, despite the tax penalties that come from doing so. Companies have learnt to trust remote workers, which allows them to hire the best people regardless of where they are, but the best people are also in demand and can move from company to company in a more peripatetic lifestyle.

Businesses engage in more “co-opetition”.
Economic conditions have taken a long time to recover after the global economic crisis that began in 2008, and businesses have learnt to be flexible and adaptive. They have been forced to enter into alliances with organisations that they previously considered competitors in order to achieve their business goals. This ‘co-opetition’ happens where organisations strengths complement each other, thus fundamentally changing the way that they think about competition.

Wildcards
Whilst wildcard events have a low probability, they would have a large impact and cause significant disruption if they came to pass.

Massive population change, either increase or decrease.
Either advances in medicine and technology increase life expectancy leading to a much larger population as fewer people die; or a serious global pandemic wipes out a significant proportion of the population. Both scenarios could result in social unrest as societies based on slow population growth come under unprecedented pressure and collapse.

Fragmentation of large political entities, increased localism.
Political blocs such as the UN, the G20, or Europe, grow too large and lose cohesion. Knock-on effects include the fragmentation of nations such as Italy into city-states and increased demands for regional power in the UK. The concept of ‘central government’ is undermined as people vote to have power returned to local officials.

Resources shock as peak oil, water and food is passed.
Changes in climate cause food shocks as droughts, storms and floods devastate much of the world’s growing regions. Altered rainfall patterns cause widespread water shortages and conflict. Oil output begins to decrease, causing prices to soar, which again causes conflict. Aggression is not just between nations but also social and civil unrest.

Huge increase in war, insurgencies, and civil unrest.
Multiple causes of conflict, mean that the majority of the world is embroiled in some sort of war, insurgency or civil unrest. Western nations are put on the defensive as terrorism increases and pull troops home not just for defensive purposes, but because war abroad is no longer politically tenable. This leads many struggling countries to collapse completely.

Change in value system from GDP to happiness or wellbeing index.
The global recession turns into a global depression, and the concept of money is re-evaluated. Disillusioned by an incompetent financial sector, people start to look for other measures of success.

Advances in biotech, nanotech and genetic engineering usher in the Post-Human Age.
Advances in prosthetics pave the way for us to connect humans and computers at a neurological level, increasing our intelligence, memory and physical endurance well past human limits.

Scenarios
Based on combining some of the drivers above, these scenarios are meant to posit possible futures and to examine their effects on civil society organisations.

Rise of the Silver Surfer: What happens when an ageing population meets increasingly powerful, and usable, technology?

The “We Can” World: Fed up with a corrupt ruling elite and inspired by the opportunities provided by social tools, people self-organise to right civic wrongs.

The Battle for Attention: Faced with increasingly diverse and entertaining ways to spend our time, those who would claim our attention find themselves in fierce competition.

Rise of the Silver Surfer
Today’s sixty-somethings are considerably more au fait with technology than their predecessors, although to cast the rise of the Silver Surfer as a new trend would be to underestimate pensioners’ adaptability and curiosity. Since the web first began, curiosity and a willingness to experiment has been more important than age. Indeed, the authors of the Cluetrain Manifesto, a seminal work examining the impact of the internet on businesses, markets and consumers, had an average age of 48 when it was written in 1999. The impact that David Weinberger, Doc Searls, Rick Levine and Chris Locke had on the understanding of internet culture cannot be underestimated and now, in 2025, Weinberger (75) and Searls (78) in particular continue to be leading voices discussing web technology, innovation and culture.

Age has never been a real barrier to engagement with the web, but confidence has. The last fifteen years has seen an improvement in the usability of computers in general. The main operating systems have become more robust and reliable, as well as much more usable. Web browsers have similarly improved and so the cognitive barriers to entry have been lowered. Digital literacy efforts over the last fifteen years by government and civil society organisations alike have paid dividends across the board, bringing a new confidence to people who had otherwise felt insecure in this new technological environment.

Demographic changes have increased the number of over 65s, whilst the working population has shrunk. Whilst there was some hope that immigration could help to flatten out the demographic hump, bolstering the workforce and increasing tax income for the government, the xenophobic sentiments of the 2000s have instead translated into tougher immigration policies. Whipped up by the tabloids and far-right political parties, over 60% of the British population in 2009 want immigration stopped and politicians grant them their wish.

Pensions have been under increasing pressure since the pension scandals of the 80s and 90s. Private pensions are mistrusted and therefore undersubscribed and the state pension is at a level so low that it is below the poverty line. Many people coming up to retirement age are ill-equipped financially, and multigenerational households become common as sons and daughters take in their parents, whose retirement is now partially funded by the sale of their house.

Advances in both medicine and medical technology — an unexpected benefit of the Iraq War was the dramatic improvement of prosthetics — mean that age-related illness and disease is now controlled, treated and cured with a much higher success rate. Previously feared diseases such as Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s have not been eradicated by they are now relatively easily treated.

The damaged pensions infrastructure, combined with workforce pressures and better health, has forced the retirement age to be raised significantly. Those who have the means to retire early still can, but many people choose to continue working into their 70s, either because they have vitality and energy to spare, or because their personal economics require it. Demands from other sections of society, including parents and disabled workers, have increased the acceptability of teleworking and part-time jobs, creating opportunities for older workers to continue their professions well into their 70s at a level of activity sustainable for them.

As business and personal use of social technology increases, so many more over-60s are exposed to it in their everyday life. Photos of the grandkids are routinely circulated to grandparents via photo sharing sites; videos of school performances are taken on camera phones and privately shared through social network sites; and elderly people who might otherwise have felt isolated are using social tools to keep in touch with friends and relatives. This gives them a huge advantage over their predecessors as all this social stimulation helps, alongside radically improved medicine, to keep them healthy.

As health in old age improves, and as an understanding of technology and the social web permeate the Silver Surfers’ culture, so pensioners being to take their experience of the web into their own hands. Dating sites just for the over-sixties are well established, but now there are focused social networks, blogging sites and activist groups.

Web accessibility becomes a hot topic, particularly around ensuring that websites function in screen readers or with larger text. The over 60s engage fully with web standards groups and have become the driving force behind campaigns to make businesses take accessibility seriously. But the it doesn’t stop there. 3D printers and access to manufacturers in Asia allow pensioners to design and build their own hardware, creating text input devices that take into account loss of dexterity or video cameras that can be more easily operated by the elderly.

Silver Surfers are no longer a minority online. The web is their future as much as it is their grandchildren, and they embrace it with open arms.

The “We Can” World
The idea of a ‘ruling elite’ has never felt more like an anachronism than it does now. The MPs’ expenses scandal of 2009 kicked off a series of exposés which took public confidence in the British political system to an all time low. Sticking-plaster fixes, including rambling discussions of a possible British Constitution that seemed to go on forever but never lead to action, by Parliament fail to fool the electorate and political engagement collapsed. Low turnout at elections lead to far-right and fringe parties winning seats in the House of Commons, further damaging the general public’s trust in government.

Local government fairs equally poorly. Budgets were mortally wounded by recession of the late 2000s, leading to swingeing cuts in crucial local services accompanied by unpopular rises in council tax. Further scandals, this time at a local level, lead to hard questions being asked about how councils are funded and run, but satisfactory questions are far and few between.

Whilst faith in the political system collapses, so does the media. A failure to monetise the web during a period of falling ad and subscription revenue deals a mortal blow to the press, with the majority of regional titles either closing or merging with neighbours. National titles fair just as badly, with the broadsheets — which have never sold as well as the tabloids — suffering the most closures. Advertising spends on TV and radio also crash, taking down many stations. The BBC loses its licence fee completely, but struggles with the transformation into a commercial business. A strike by staff over working conditions brings the Corporation to its knees and it nearly doesn’t recover.

Worried as much about local terrorism as a response to the building frustration with in the UK as global terrorism, the Government tightens terror laws. Whilst the worst excesses of surveillance, such as 24/7 personal location tracking via mobile phone GPS chips, are curtailed by the European Court of Human Rights, the Government pushes for as much surveillance and control as it can get away with. Already the most surveilled country in the world, the UK is flooded with more CCTV cameras, despite evidence that they are ineffective. There are several high-profile cases of ‘suspects’ being wrongly detained, prosecuted and even shot dead as the fear of being the officer who “let the terrorist get away” permeates the police force and causes a culture of over-reaction.

But in stark contrast, individuals feel empowered as they never have before. As individuals see a failing in society, so they use social technology to rally around that cause and take positive action. Social networking tools extend people’s social reach well beyond what was previously possible by hooking together different people’s networks into one. With just a few hundred immediate contacts, one person can end up with a network of several million people within three degrees of separation (i.e. a friend of a friend of a friend). This allows ideas to, potentially, spread through society like wildfire.

In reality, many good ideas don’t get the social traction needed to make them truly “go viral”, but it’s also true that most activism doesn’t rely on huge adoption of an idea, but on a committed few. This proves that the “1:9:90 Rule” — which states that 90% of a social website’s visitors are passive, 9% engage partially with simple or easy actions, and only 1% engage fully as committed users — holds true for civil society organisations too.

Activism isn’t limited to the political, although there’s a lot of that going on. Rather, people are focused on the civic and personal needs of their own and of the people around them. Small local groups form to deal with local issues, such as lobbying the council to fix potholes or to raise money to pay for local amenities such as refurbishing a children’s playground. The internet also has “localities” and people who share a common interest, in issue such as copyright reform or the provision of support for teenagers, gather virtually to effect change.

This grassroots activism becomes much more common and stops being the preserve of a vocal minority. The ease with which people can take action, whether through e-democracy services that help people interact with their elected representatives or whether through social tools that make activism fun, dramatically lowers the barriers to action. Culturally, being an activist is more acceptable too. Gone are the days of rampant individualism that characterised the 80s and 90s; instead, people are returning to a more considered, collaborative way of being and collective action is a big part of that cultural shift.

Ad hoc groups, which form for a short time in response to a specific issue and then dissipate, also become more common. The idea of becoming a life-long supporter of a single cause fades as people to shift their focus according to shifting priorities. Ad hoc groups raise money online using services like PayPal without creating large organisational structures, but also without necessarily accounting for their expenditure. A high profile charity con results in an attempt to regulate, but there is little that can be achieved through legislation to combat such scams. Instead, a new class of third sector organisation is created which is easier, quicker and cheaper to set up, govern and dissolve when no longer needed, and which provides previously informal groups with some legal protection.

The ease with which individuals can embrace voluntary work also changes the nature of their relationship with existing civil society organisations. They can now create both symbiotic groups which act to support existing associations, or groups which directly compete with established rivals. This ability to self-organise is embraced by some traditional organisations who find creative ways to work with the talent available on the internet, frequently collaborating with groups that they never meet in person. Other third sector organisations reject this opportunity, and find themselves becoming increasingly irrelevant. If an organisation does not embrace the web itself, the supporters of its cause will fill the gap however they can, with or without their sanction or support.

The shift from passive to active support transforms civil society, and online social tools are the glue tools holds that activism together.

The Battle for Attention
The internet in general, and social technology in particular, has made it easier than ever for people to keep in touch with friends, relatives, acquaintances and business contacts. Social networks and micro-conversation tools (such as Twitter) have encouraged people to maintain many relationships that would, in previous decades, have fallen by the wayside. These ‘weak’ relationships — perhaps with school friends that one no longer sees, or colleagues from a job one left years ago — last for years, and there’s a blurring of the line between ‘friend’ and ‘acquaintance’, with relationships waxing and waning, but rarely ending.

The number of strong relationships that people maintain, however, has remained relatively steady at between 10 and 20, a limit that appears to be built-in to the human brain. However, the spread of one person’s influence is no longer limited to just their immediate circle of friends, but instead ripples through networks of networks. People spend considerable time maintaining these networks and relationships; the feeling of being connected is important, and people not only feel that the effort is worth it, but that it’s enjoyable to be a part of a larger group.

As the number of relationships we maintain blossoms, so do the opportunities we have to spend our time socially online. The opportunities to interact online are seemingly endless, from the massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMPORGs) that gained huge popularity and mainstream acceptance during the 2000s to blogging to all the apps and games provided on social networking platforms.

People spend more and more of their time making their own media. Video cameras have been cheap for years, and the skills and tools required to shoot and edit short films are becoming common. The social rewards for creating a YouTube hit are massive. More people than ever are writing, too; not just blogs but books as well as self-publication becomes easy and culturally acceptable. Crafting and tinkering with electronics has seen a popular resurgence too, as people long to make physical objects and to own beautiful hand-made pieces. A trend that started during the recession as people tried to make a little extra money through selling hand-crafted goods has persisted even though the economic incentive has gone.

All this additional activity means that traditional ways to capture our attention have atrophied. Despite the switch to digital television, the average amount of time spent watching TV has steadily declined. On-demand TV services have proven to be too little, too late, as watchers switch off in droves so that they can spend their time doing more sociable things. As audience numbers fall, so advertising spend falls with it, sending the broadcasting industry into a downwards spiral.

Other sections of the entertainment industry are also in decline, especially the music and film industries, whose lobbying of Government for harsher intellectual property laws has done nothing to protect them from a public who want more than the formulaic output that’s be come the norm. The industry’s habit of punishing fans for ‘intellectual property infringement’ has alienated the public, who have rallied round independent musicians and film makers and abandoned the mainstream.

‘Attention’ has become a scarce resource. The number of hours in the day that people can spend on leisure activities roughly the same as it’s been for the last few decades, but the number of ways we can spend that time seems limitless. Industries and sectors that depend upon attention are now fighting for their share. Advertising is no longer as effective as it once was, and the shock tactics used by some civil society organisations to get their message across has had the opposite effect, inuring potential supporters and alienating them at the same time.

The organisations that do well, whether business or third sector, are the ones who take the time to work with these changes, instead of fighting to return to the olden days. The careful building of relationships and a sense of community has replaced shiny PR campaigns. The concept of being ‘on message’ has been shown to be outmoded, as people not only appreciate honesty and transparency, they actually reward organisations who have shown themselves able to admit to and correct mistakes.

But despite the opportunities that social tools provide to connect with people, getting attention in this age of information continues to be challenging.

Implications

How do civil society associations communicate effectively with their constituency in a world where attention is scarce and the media inaccessible?
Two factors — the consolidation of the media market and increasing competition for attention — are going to make it difficult for civil society associations to continue with their existing marketing and communications strategies. Print, TV and radio advertising are likely to become less effective at attracting supporters’ attention and may even reach the point of becoming uneconomic. The third sector will not be immune to consumers’ green preferences, which means providing more information and services via the internet, with direct mail campaigns attracting the ire of recipients. Civil society associations will have to radically rethink their communications and fundraising tactics to take into account supporters’ need to be able to do everything online.

What does it mean for civil society associations to nurture relationships with their supporters at an individual level?
With broadcast style communications no longer effective, and social technology the norm, civil society associations will have to adapt their communications strategies to fit web culture. In 2025, as at the birth of blogging at the turn of the century, the cultural watch-words remain: transparency, honesty, openness, authenticity. This means a huge cultural change for third sector organisations and as they struggle to accept that they cannot control their ‘brand’ and that conversation trumps PR ‘messaging’. In larger organisations with more rigid hierarchies, the concept of letting staff talk about their work on Twitter or blogs will at first be an anathema, but it will eventually become a business necessity.

How do civil society associations get up to date with, and stay up to date with, technological advances which affect not only the way in which they communicate, but the way that they work internally and achieve their business goals?
Whilst traditionally it was the role of the IT department to assess and recommend technology, that role has now morphed into a much more risk-averse, less experimental one. Many IT departments are tasked with keeping the technical infrastructure ‘safe’ at any costs, and often that cost is flexibility, adaptability and agility. Organisations who rely on IT to identify new technology will lag behind those who empower every employee to look at, experiment with and recommend social tools. This is particularly important at small organisations who may not have the resources to employ a person solely to look after IT, or whose IT departments are struggling simply with keeping the network alive. Digital literacy training will need to be widespread, as will an adaptable and curious mind.

How do civil society associations respond to a decrease in trust of authority figures and institutions?
A sea change in how we define and react to authority will fundamentally affect the position of third sector associations within society. As authority figures, such as MPs, continue to abuse their position and the gap between rich and poor continues to widen, so scepticism about all types of authority will creep in. The only authority that will be respected will be authority earnt and proven through continual demonstration of knowledge and ability. ‘Claimed authority’ will wane as people question why some people have rights and privileges that others do not, for no discernible reason. This loss of respect for authority will leak through into the third sector, with civil society associations expected to prove themselves and open themselves up more to scrutiny so that the public can ensure they are honest and trustworthy. Organisations will have to think about how they can earn trust in a less trustful world.

How do civil society associations create a culture of experimentation, and how do they learn to cope positively with failure?
The cost of experimenting with social media and other technologies is currently low and set to go lower. There is lots of open source software of an excellent standard available for free, so the cost of experimentation is not high, but the cultural barriers are. The idea of a “website launch” is outdated and outmoded, with the majority of new websites and services preferring to invite a limited number of users into a “closed alpha” as an extended test before opening up into a “beta” testing phase. This allows unfinished software to be rigourously tested and improved in conjunction with users, who no longer expect to be presented with finished, perfect software. This cultural change, from a controlling and risk-averse culture to an innovative, risk-accepting culture is one that has shown itself to be key in technology and will become just as important in the third sector.

How can civil society associations ensure that their digital strategy includes opportunities for older staff and volunteers?
The concept of the ‘digital native’ is a common but flawed way to think about those people who have a talent for understanding web culture and tools. Whilst younger people are often exposed to more technology and can find it easier to adapt to change, many older people also have the right mindset and skills to fully engage with social technology. As the population ages, so it is likely that more older people will become involved in the third sector, and although many will have the capability to use social tools, they may not necessarily have had the opportunity to learn about them. Civil society organisations that take digital literacy seriously and ensure that all their staff and volunteers have the opportunity to become familiar with new technologies will find themselves much better placed to take advantage of the web.

How can civil society associations use technology to fully empower their staff, volunteers and supporters to act, rather than passively receive information?
The web is not just a medium for communicating information to a constituency, but is a platform for action. The 2008 presidential election campaign by Barack Obama clearly illustrated how the web can be used to rally support both online and offline, and it is rightly held up as an inspiring example. Civil society organisations which simply use the web to broadcast will be much less successful than those who provide ways for supporters and volunteers to engage with the organisation and each other. Many of these paths to engagement may be very simple, but empowering people to take positive action via the internet will become a key part of civil society association’s work over the next 15 years.

Looking forwards
The internet has change immeasurably over the last 15 years, and it has changed the world around it in fundamental ways. There is no reason to think that such a significant will not happen again over the next 15 years. The web in 2025 is not going to just be ‘more of the same’, but is more likely to be unrecognisable compared to what we have today. Exactly how it will change is unknowable, but we can prepare for the unknown by focusing on the traits that make people and organisations adaptable, forward thinking and innovative.

Every part of society is going to be touched by technology, and social technology in particular. These changes provide a valuable opportunity for civil society organisations to become more efficient, more capable and more adaptable. Social tools provide a way for organisations to form stronger relationships with their supporters, their audience and their volunteers. Organisations which don’t embrace technology will find themselves cast to the margins as more and more people enjoy the convenience and connection afforded by the web to be an essential part of the way they live their life.

Below is my list. What do you think?

Predetermined
Increase in number of interpersonal connections.
Ubiquity of technology and connectivity.
Social software moves into the mainstream.
Increase in surveillance, by government and citizens alike.
Self-organisation.
Ageing population.
Decrease in trust of authority figures.
Green issues become more important.
Cuts in public services spending and access.

Uncertain changes
Split between inwards-looking individualism and outwards-looking collectivism.
Experimentation and failure becomes more acceptable.
Wide availability of information leads to either overload or smart/group filters.
Consolidation of the media; rise of community-sourced news.
Over-regulation of the internet stifles growth.
Multiculturalism leads to either tolerance or increased conflict.
Flexible, portfolio careers becomes more common.
Businesses engage in more “co-opetition”.
Self-organisation leads to greater political engagement, or loss of trust in politicians leads to apathy.
‘Web of things’ leads to realtime monitoring of inanimate objects.

Wildcards
Massive population change, either increase or decrease.
Fragmentation of large political entities, increased localism.
Resources shock as peak oil, water and food passed.
Huge increase in war, insurgencies, and social unrest.
Change in value system from GPD to happiness index.
The Singularity: Advances in biotech, nanotech and genetic engineering usher in the post-human age.
Pestilence and global pandemic.

Same drivers, except Wildcards, but organised by topic
Politics/Authority
Increase in surveillance, by government and citizens alike.
Decrease in trust of authority figures.
Cuts in public services spending and access.
Consolidation of the media; rise of community-sourced news.
Over-regulation of the internet stifles growth.
Self-organisation leads to greater political engagement, or loss of trust in politicians leads to apathy.

Society/Culture
Ageing population.
Multiculturalism leads to either tolerance or increased conflict.
Self-organisation.
Split between inwards-looking individualism and outwards-looking collectivism.

Personal
Increase in number of interpersonal connections.
Green issues become more important.

Technology
Ubiquity of technology and connectivity.
Social software moves into the mainstream.
Wide availability of information leads to either overload or smart/group filters.
‘Web of things’ leads to realtime monitoring of inanimate objects.

Business
Experimentation and failure becomes more acceptable.
Flexible, portfolio careers becomes more common.
Businesses engage in more “co-opetition”.

The big problem I have with this anti-expert meme is that it totally mischaracterises what it is to have expertise in the realm of social media. After five years of being a professional social media consultant, I can promise you that it takes a lot of hard work to really understand how social media functions in a business context - not just for marketing but for internal use too. It’s not just about understanding how the tools work, it’s about understanding the business context (doing gap analysis, for example), it’s about understanding how people work, both in relationship to the technology and each other (basic psychology and sociology), it’s about communication skills, management skills, analytical skills.

None of that is stuff that you can just pick up overnight. A super-user is not the same as an expert - it’s not about knowing how the tools work, how to make a new blog post or set up a new wiki. It’s a much more nuanced job and involves constant learning from sometimes unexpected sources. I never thought I’d end up talking to psychologists about email when I started as a consultant, but understanding why people are wedded to their inbox helps me to understand the problems I will face when trying to introduce them to a wiki. Being an expert in social media means that you are constantly pushing to understand the non-obvious, constantly questioning the assumptions and the so-called common sense explanations for why things happen the way they happen.

Frankly I feel that I and my peers all fit the definition of expert:

a person who has a comprehensive and authoritative knowledge of or skill in a particular area

And we should be able to call ourselves experts without being censured by the community for doing so.

I think some of that censure comes from the idea that the internet is a truly democratic space where everyone is equal and to decide to elevate oneself by using the term ‘expert’ is somehow repellant. Well, I’m afraid the idea that the internet is a level playing field is bunkum. The history of the internet is shot through with elites and the people they look down upon (AOL, anyone?). Humans naturally create hierarchies, it’s part of being human. Hierarchies exist everywhere one looks, and they exist on the net too.

Whilst social media is a great democratising force, I fear people are confusing equality of opportunity with equality of outcome. The important thing about the internet and about social media in particular is that everyone has an equal opportunity to use it, but the truth - unpalatable as it may seem - is that not everyone will use it equally as well. However you define success, whether it’s on a personal self-expression level or whether it’s on a professional earnings level, some people will be more successful than others. The outcomes are not, and can never be, equal.

Yet we’re not supposed to use the word ‘expert’, despite the fact that some people clearly are more expert than others. Why this squeamishness? Partly I think there’s a real hatred amongst social media types for the self-promotional excesses we see all about us on the web. We see people bigging themselves up and it makes us squirm in our seats. And we don’t want others to think that we are that egotistical, that far up ourselves. Instead we want the warm fuzzy feeling that comes from someone else’s praise of our work, those third-party accolades and testimonials.

I can understand that. I’m not particularly great at self-promotion. It makes me feel dirty and unhappy. But relying only on external validation for our work is unhealthy, not just for us and our own mental health, but also for our industry. By censuring anyone who says they are an expert, we imply that there are no leaders and that everyone is equal. That implication devalues everyone working in the area by bringing us down to the same common denominator, making us no better than the whippersnapper carpetbagger who’s been on Twitter six weeks and thinks they know it all.

It also seems to me that the desire to punish people for saying they are an expert may, in some quarters, come from our own insecurities about a profession that seems like it should be easy. “I don’t feel like an expert, so anyone else who says they are an expert has to be bullshitting.” I have some sympathy for this, given my own recurrent self-doubt, but it is wrong. Being a social media expert is not easy at all and anyone who is one knows that.

I can’t think of any other professional field where is is frowned up on to simply call oneself an expert. Indeed, in every other field I can think of, we actively seek out experts. If you have a bad problem with your drains, you call a drainage expert without even thinking about it. If you want to learn about the nuances of the Bard’s great works, you seek out an expert in Shakespeare. If your MacBook conks out, you take it to an Apple expert.

There’s nothing wrong with being an expert in these fields, so why is it wrong in social media?

In the Twitter conversation this morning, @BenjaminEllis said “@Suw It’s hard for the true experts when people with 6 months experience and no results to show for it call themselves experts too.”

That’s a fair point. We deal with false experts in other fields by assessing their claims about themselves in the light of the evidence we can gather about how well they perform. Recommendations, reviews, even our intuition as we talk to them about our problem, help us understand whether they are as good as they say they are. The same is true in social media. People, hopefully, don’t just judge a social media consultant based on what they say about themselves, but also delve into their past work and their reputation.

But we don’t help that process by denying people the right to call themselves experts. By doing that, we also deny ourselves the opportunity to tell stories about expertise that help people outside of our field understand what a genuine social media expert looks like. If I can’t talk about what I think makes me an expert in social media, how are we going to find out what other people think makes an expert? I can say that I think Leisa Reichelt is an expert in usability, and I can point to her work to illustrate my point, but Leisa knows better than I what it takes to be expert in usability. If we never have that conversation, I’m none the wiser about how to compare her expertise with other people’s. How can I tell if Mr X is as good as he says he is?

The number of people self-identifying as social media consultants has sky-rocketed in the last year or so, and we need to start having conversations about what makes an expert an expert. If we can’t talk about it, understand it, and communicate it, how on earth do we expect clients to make good decisions about who to hire? We all decry the carpetbaggers, but we can’t do that and decry the experts too! We have to let people say that they are experts and we have to talk about what that means and how to compare claims of expertise against evidence of expertise. We can’t go on pretending that we’re all equal, and that experts don’t exist (whatever reasoning you give for it), because we’re not and they do.

There’s more I could say, but I’m going to leave it at this for now:

My name is Suw and I’m a social media expert.

Well, here’s my first stab. Please do feel free to critique them thoroughly in the comments or in notes on the Flickr image if you want.

I always say that social media is 20% tech and 80% people, and for me the important issues are human issues, not tech. Yes, there might be problems about resources such as energy and raw materials, but those can end up in arbitrage (buy where it’s cheap and sell where it’s expensive) and the market takes care of them. And for resources that can’t be controlled by the market, we’ll find ways to be more efficient, to do more with less, and to recycle.

So I ended up thinking about resources as not as important as they might seem, apart from one: human attention. We are in an attention economy (as the news, music and film industries seem not to have noticed yet), and that’s something that cannot be arbitraged, you cannot buy yourself more attention. Another theme that came out strongly was the human need to create and maintain relationships, and how that is changing as technology - particularly social technology - enables us to keep in touch with more people for longer.

The first matrix therefore juxtaposes the number of relationships a person has against the amount of attention they have to give. This will affect the way that civil society associations can benefit by affecting how hard it is for them to form relationship with new people, and how much attention they can expect to get from each person. I see a general trend from giving more attention to fewer organisations/people towards giving less attention to more organisations/people. Obviously it’s not as simple as that, because if you plot attention vs person you’d find a long-tail, with a minority of your relationships getting a majority of the attention, but averaged out over all relationships I think this is a valid trend.

The second matrix juxtaposes two other common undercurrents: Control and self-organisation. Many of the items on my mindmap, such as ‘regulation’, ‘marginalisation of dissent’ and ‘return to conservatism’ are really about controlling either people or the technology that they use. That seems to fit together with self-organisation, a theme expressed through items like ‘open source software’, ‘mass adoption’, and ’skills move towards adaptive’, which all enable self-organisation.

The third matrix looks at privacy and trust, and how they combine to create different types and amounts of participation. Privacy was illustrated by items such as ‘face recognition’, ‘tracking’ and ‘mutually assured embarrassment’. Trust was a main theme that came out in my mind map’s first level branches.

The final matrix pits pervasiveness of technology and the web against the utility of the tools, and sees a movement from scarcity and a lack of utility, i.e. tech/the web as a minority sport, towards mass adoption and increased utility creating vibrant online cultures.

There are quite a few other issues that I am not sure where they fit, such as the diminishing media, inclusion/exclusion, changing demographics, and some of the other macro effects.

Some comments have already been left on the Flickr image of this diagram, so please do feel free to leave your thoughts there or in the comments below. What’s missing? What’s wrong? What’s right? What’s irrelevant? Please let me know!

I’ve made a start with that processing by distilling everything down into keywords and phrases, and then grouping them together in a sensible manner and making the mother of all mindmaps to try and impose some order on it all. I’ve put aside for now the concept of type of change, e.g. predetermined or uncertain, and instead tried to find similarities in theme instead. It makes for an interesting view - you’ll need the full size image to read the text, though, or download the PDF.

There’s undoubtedly stuff that’s missing from this mindmap. It’s not supposed to be all encompassing - indeed, I don’t think that would be possible - but I did notice that no one really talked about gaming, for example. Now that may not ultimately affect the scenarios that I’m going to be writing because so much of what’s important on this map is not about specific technologies but more about behaviours, cultural shifts, etc. That said, if you’re into gaming and want to add your thoughts in the comments I would love to have my intuition double-checked! Equally, if you think I’ve missed anything else that you feel is crucial, please comment.

My next task is to try to pull out a sense of movement from these themes, and to come up with some scenarios. Expect another blog post soon!