Past Socialism versus Today’s Socialism
Posted by Manuela Barreto @ June 16th, 2009 in Social Marketing
Lately, I’ve been reading a lot of posts on the phenomenon of social networking coming to its end and predictions about Twitter becoming obsolete.
One problem about technology (and everything else in general) is that once something is expected to be ‘the next big thing’, it doesn’t actually mean it will retain its fame forever. Studies such as that from the Participatory Marketing Network are already pointing out some of the ‘flaws’ networks such as Twitter are presenting. However, we’ll just have to wait and see.
I really enjoyed reading an article on this month’s edition of WIRED by Kevin Kelly dubbed The New Socialism where he claims that the popular social networking platforms existent today are a vanguard of a social movement, nothing to do with Karl Marx’s idea of socialism though. Instead, in his article, Kelly uses the term socialism because technically it is the best word to describe a range of technologies that rely for their power on social interactions.
Kelly doesn’t believe this socialism is an ideology, rather it is a spectrum of attitudes, techniques and tools that promote collaboration, sharing, cooperation and collectivism, which in turn represent the hierarchy for sorting through this ‘new socialism’ scheme defined by media theorist Clay Shirky.
In today’s world it’s practically inevitable not to be connected to anyone and everyone, 24 hours and day, seven days a week. Think Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, YouTube. In his article, Kelly runs a comparative table of the old socialism (the ideology) and the New Socialism (the cultural movement). Some of the comparisons he highlights include the idea that while old socialism centralizes authority among elite officials, the new socialism distributes power among ad hoc participants. This meaning, we are all community, we all work together towards a common goal.
It continues by saying that in a socialistic regime, there’s forced labor in government factories whereas the new socialism encourages volunteerism Wikipedia-style. Wikipedia or wikiness is one significant example of collectivism.
Freedom of speech is also a big issue in socialism, one that we know is entirely controlled by the government. Anyone who violates this, will be harshly punished for criticizing major leaders in public.
The beauty of today’s socialism: Real-time Tweets and RSS Feeds and the opinions of individuals being published on the Huffington Post.
Last 5 posts in Social Marketing
- Twitter's Red Carpet Era- the real and the fake users - March 11th, 2010
- B2B companies increasing interactive marketing spend and using social media - March 4th, 2010
- Small businesses learn from the big guys and adopt social media - March 2nd, 2010
- Online social network advertising spending up, up, up - February 18th, 2010
- Social Media involvement and evolution - February 10th, 2010
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