Who Owns the Future Chapter 2

Lanier starts off the chapter by discussing how technology is putting people out of work. Or is it? He gives the example of Google translation. When an individual searches a phrase to translate, instead of having one person sitting in Google headquarters with an Spanish to English dictionary, Google just searches the internet for translations that have already been provided by people online. These translations always aren't perfect, but they get the job done. The individual who searched the phrase doesn't think of all the effort the people who made the translations did. That is why Lanier proposes that every individual that shares something of importance and knowledge be compensated for their contribution. The more valuable the information provided, the more compensation shall be received.

I think that this is a very interesting concept. My initial thoughts are that it is a great idea. But thinking about it in more depth, how would we be able to measure exactly how 'valuable' the information is. How can we say that the information that one person posts that is already readily available to us is better than roughly the same thing another person posts. How would these individuals be compensated? Would every single person have to set up a PayPal account that could have money be instantly deposited as soon as the post was official? What about every author that has original work? Would they get compensated every time their work got posted someplace else? Or every time a person used and cited their work? Even though the idea sounds great , I believe that there are to many roadblocks standing in the way of this thought becoming a reality.

Social Organization Chapters 5 and 6

I enjoy how Bradley and McDonald begin chapter five by showing how companies try to get individuals to interact both internally and externally by using the same boring and bland statements. They then go on to show how a potentially good way to use social media to perk the interest of individuals may look. This is a very accurate statement because most people will just overlook a chance to participate because of a poorly and non-exciting post, but once something of interest that can help them out is brought to attention then it is a whole different story. This is where they present the No, Go, Grow decision tree which can be used by any company. The 'No' aspect is basically just asking if there is a purpose to whatever is being done. Once it is decided that there is one, it goes on to the 'Go' stage where it is asked if a grassroots campaign will work within the community and how hard it would be to create anything needed and further peek interest. Finally, the 'Grow' stage is when it is believed that the grassroots campaign won't work and it is projected out to a larger community to  bring even more attention.

Chapter six goes on to talk about building roadmaps to help guide the organization on where to go. They talk about BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee and how they were able to create and implement theirs. The event that caught my interest was when they turned their attention to FICO. FICO created the myFICO forums and were able to grow tremendously. The forums took off and FICO realized that myFICO participants were willing to spend more money and that sales growth was a direct effect of the forum. In that year, FICO was able to increase their return on investment by an astounding 300 percent.

Social Organization Chapters 3 and 4

Chapters three and four of the Social Organization talk about setting up and and utilizing communities in social media. they discuss how many businesses create a social media account based solely on the idea that it will immediately have a positive effect on them. However, this is not true at all. Many companies have created a social media account and have just let it sit. This is not going to create any positive buzz for the company. The only positive effects will come from the social media being used correctly. The company is going to have to make sure it is focused on the exact market that they are targeting and even get them involved.
They also talked about the six 'Fs': folly, fearful, flippant, formulating, forging, and fusing. These all describe how a company views social media. These range from not wanting to have anything to do with it in folly to pretty much making every major decision through communities using social media. More companies are at the folly end of the spectrum than the latter, but with the ever changing world that number is dwindling as more and more companies are becoming more adventurous with social media.

Mass Collaboration

Mass Collaboration is the act of a large number of people that may have little connection with each other come together to create something of value. The Social Organization says there are three key components that are involved with mass collaboration: social media, community, and purpose. The Student Accounting Society can demonstrate this on a small scale. The community consists of accounting or prospective accounting students. The purpose is for them to learn more about the accounting field and make connections to professionals. The only area that SAS really lacks on is social media. The only social media that they use is orgsync. Orgsync does do what it is meant to in keeping the members updated, but I believe that having another social media website paired with this would be more efficient. This would allow the people that do not use orgsync as often as they should the opportunity to be updated on all aspects. It would also allow them the opportunity to make suggestions.

Lanier vs. Schmidt and Cohen

Jaron Lanier has a very interesting take on how the advances in technology are going to impact the human race. He thinks that the advancement of technology is going to hurt us. In the beginning of You Are Not a Gadget Lanier tells a story about a speech he gave in which he dared the audience to put their phones down and not post anything he says on a social media website until after he is done with his lecture. This is because he believes that people are so quick to the draw in letting their emotions fly where it is available to the rest of the world. He suggests that eventually humans will just input all of their knowledge and personality into computers and basically just live through them. He brings up the point of when we are communicating to an individual online we are not sure if it is man or machine. He also brings up the even more horrifying thought of Singularity. This is basically the idea that one day robots will be able to recreate themselves. Not only will they be able to recreate themselves, but they will be able to generate a smarter version of themselves. After a few regenerations of these robots, they will be so intelligent that they will be able to take over.

Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen take a different perspective of the advancement of technology. They view it as being a beneficial way for people to connect, communicate, and learn. They believe that tools such as suggestive searching, voice recognition, robotics, and artificial intelligence will help to both save time and change how we think. They view the advancement as a way to create a level playing field for all countries across the world. They say that people in developed countries will then be able to see the ideas and geniuses of undeveloped countries that we would previously have no knowledge of.

I tend to agree with Lanier more, but I think his views go way to far into the extremes of possibility. Technology can be our greatest asset if it is used properly. However, people are becoming more interested in just stalking people they used to know or even people that they would like to know rather than using it to progress the human race. Schmidt and Cohen definitely have a optimistic view. If the human race does change how they want to use technology, then it will be our greatest ally, but until then it will just be a giant waste of opportunity.

Social Organization

The organization I am going to be writing about is the Student Accounting Society. SAS doesn't use a a whole bunch of social media. The only source of social media they use is orgsync in order to stay connected with the members inside of the organization. The challenges with this is that not every member or prospective member signs up for orgsync. This means that they do not always get the updates on events happening or meeting times. They also have an ever constant changing roster of members and the leadership positions are also constantly changing. The organizations in the book had the problem of keeping communications high among the many employees around the world. Cemex used social media to help converge businesses that they had purchased to help ease the mergers. A Facebook page might be a successful approach for SAS. They could create an e-mail that the leadership positions would be made responsible for. This would be a bigger convenience for the members as well as the majority of them would already have a Facebook. Status updates and messages would be an easy way to update meeting times and who was going to be speaking at them.