I spent yesterday at a fabulous conference–xPotomac (formerly Blog Potomac), which focuses on social media and new technologies for mostly marketing and PR folks. It was a great event: limited in number of attendees, with speakers who spent as much time doing Q&A with the audience as they did speaking. We talked about the power of images, augmented reality (and how it’s not science fiction any more), and the importance of context and influence versus social “rankings.” The speakers were all in the audience, and, frankly, most of the audience were people who usually were speakers at conferences. This was a really smart group, and the quality of the conversation all day reflected that fact clearly.

The closing keynote was given by Andrew Keen. In his twitter bio, he declares himself the “antichrist of Silicon Valley.” I haven’t read his books, but I’ve encountered his basic messages in articles and now this keynote. Social media is a big problem according to Keen. It dilutes the quality of professional work by giving amateurs a bigger voice, and it supports our overall narcissism by pushing us to always be selling ourselves. He feels we have developed a society of “weak individuals” as a result.

His arguments were generally not well received in this crowd (or with me, for that matter). Nor was his condescending and rather insulting treatment of individuals in the room (this is apparently part of his shtick, though it had me thinking of a different book that has nothing to do with social media–The No Asshole Rule, by Bob Sutton; conference organizers take note).

But there was one point from his talk that stuck with me, and I think it’s important. Keen’s arguments have been described as dystopian–that the world is going to heck in a handbasket because of this social media thing. We all stay in our little social media bubbles, where we hang out only with people who are just like us and don’t ever get to know our neighbors, and this leads to the tearing of the fabric of society, etc. Someone asked him if he had a more utopian alternative (if that’s even possible for a dystopian!). His response was important (and I’m paraphrasing here):

If we had been sitting here in the 1860s or 1870s warning people about the dangerous environmental effects of the industrial revolution we would have been pushed off to the side as misguided lunatics. The industrial revolution was going to feed our people, increase standard of living, and solve major world problems. How could you be against it? Of course it had some very negative effects–that we are living with today–and throughout history we have certainly responded to those issues at one level or another.

But the point I took away is that every revolution has a dark side. The positive changes of a revolution are alluring, and we all want to spend time talking about that. It’s such a great relief to be talking about those positive changes, particularly if you’re fed up with the status quo. But it is very important to see past those positive effects to the potential negatives. All systems have positives and negatives. We all have a dark side. Yin and yang. The more we are aware of it, the better we deal with it. It’s not about going back to the status quo. But it is about understanding what the real implications are about a substantial loss of privacy society-wide.

One of the speakers was a futurist. He got a big laugh with is line “What do you call someone who predicts the future? A crackpot.” Futurists are not about narrowing down to one predicted future. They are about understanding a range of plausible scenarios that can guide our current decision making. We need to explore in detail some of these negative scenarios so we are prepared to deal with the dark side of the revolution as we move forward.

If you read my blog regularly, you know I’m a fan of the social media revolution. Humanize is all about that as well. I think the way it has democratized things is good. I think opening up access to the “amateurs” has vastly expanded our knowledge and our possibilities. I think open and trustworthy and transparent are better than the world of elite experts running the show behind the curtain. But if we fall into the trap of “well this is just the direction the technology is taking us, so we’d better get used to it,” we’ll be doing ourselves a disservice. Let’s keep our eye on the dark side and continue to talk about it. But, for the record, let’s not insult each other while we’re doing it.

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