The New World Is Here, Photo By Author

One of my favorite slides in a kind of ‘intro to digital PR boot camp’ session we run for clients here in our London office shows the two main factors in technological adaptation: ease of use and low cost. The theory is simple: as price of technology comes down and it becomes easier to use, more and more people will adopt it. Major drivers of digital adoption have always been combinations of these two factors: AOL offering cheap, ‘training wheels’ access to Newsgroups in 1993 lead to the so-called (by us old timers) Eternal September explosion of online discourse that continues to this day. Blogger and LiveJournal offering instant push-button publishing in the late 90s and early 00s that put telling stories online into the hands of anyone with a connection, a computer and a basic knowledge of word processing. Napster putting digital distribution in the hands of anyone who knew how to use a search tool, and the iPod and iTunes bringing it inside and putting a suit and tie on it with DRM and distribution deals. In fact, the iPod is a perfect example of this phenomenon. My wife remarked upon receiving her iPod as a birthday present a few years ago, ‘this interface just makes sense, it works like it should.’ And that’s the beauty of making tech easy and accessible: making it work like it should.

What this leads to is a massive influx of new users online, especially as broadband adoption picks up across Europe, Africa and Asia. It’s still too early to tell but the One Laptop Per Child program or something very much like it is going to add more voices to the global community than any Internet-enabled phone can do. And as these voices join the conversation, they will no doubt follow the same sociological principles that online conversation and thus digital PR and the ways PR people must interact with consumers online: joining groups of ‘people like them’ engaged in dialogue and conversation, sharing opinions and listening to trusted sources of information.

My esteemed colleague Simon Collister has written extensively about the sociological development of online communities and in my opinion he’s absolutely spot-on. His view of communities as anarchist organizations specifically ought to be required reading for any media professional trying to understand how these communities tick. Key quote:

Ward outlines what he believes would be the four defining pillars for an anarchist theory of organizations:

1. Voluntary
2. Functional
3. Temporary
4. Small

I find this mind blowing. Every single one of these fits almost perfectly the different types of organising taking place on the internet.

1. Voluntary – read Benkler’s Wealth of Networks: the idea of people giving their time and expertise for free or on a voluntary basis is revolutionisng production – both of knowledge and physical goods.

2. Functional – slightly more vague, but suffice to say that while design is important to an extent, good functionality and usability are key to the success of internet tools. Take for example the basic simplicity of sites like of Wikipedia and del.icio.us – they might not be pretty but they do the job successfully.

3. Temporary – While this may seem an odd choice of criteria at first if you clarify what Ward means then it makes perfect sense. Rather than meaning short-lived, Ward uses the term to indicate a willingness to change; to be shaped by the ends of the user or community. This is a key proponent of web 2.0 tools. All ‘social’ websites by their definition are open to the requirements of the community.

4. Small - again this criteria needs further clarification. As Ward suggests in the quotation about, the ideas of anarchists are perpetually being re-shaped to meet current social, political and economical conditions. Ward specifies small as a key criteria as he talks only of the offline world where anarchist initiatives need to remain small in order to be sustainable. The internet reduces all barriers to scalability and supports many small-scale communities or one large one.

I was attempting to explain this theory to Dr. Roger Whitson, a friend from college and explaining how it needs to inform how organizations both engage in and treat the community. What I told him is that in these communities, companies and organizations need to follow the rules of the community and understand how it works: that a company representative or PR person was no different than any other member of the community, that they were expected to contribute to the community apart from simply repeating key messages over and over, that they needed to respect everyone else equally and listen and participate. Basically what we’ve been saying since Cluetrain but with actual sociological and political theory to back it up.

Next time: Dr. Whitson’s reply and corporate control.