Humans Creating a Medium On A Whole New Scale: Cool

When books first started to be produced in significant quantities in the early 1600’s, academics changed significantly. Because all of a sudden, books were available to thinkers in other countries. They could compare ideas and concepts. That had never happened before.

As I looked at the topics being discussed from my last post, it made me realize that Social Media tools have enabled this yet again. What struck me as even more amazing is that perhaps for the first time in history, we’re co-developing the way we engage in this medium on a huge, collaborative scale never before available to humanity.

Hundreds, if not thousands, of people are writing their approach to Social Media activities like blogging, how to use Twitter or leverage a Social Network for marketing or selling. Many more are reading those articles. The power of being able to “comment” on what someone has written has identified thought leaders like Chris Brogan or Jeremiah Owyang and Beth Harte. Because they make sense to the majority.

Part of what I find amazing about Social Media is that we’re all learning together and creating how this medium can be used for business, writing, sharing ideas…anything knowledge based. The tools were created, as a general public, we’re deciding how to use them. On a scale never before available to us.

We’ve always had gate keepers that have controlled mass-communications; editors, pr consultants, reporters, lawyers, doctors…not anymore. We can choose to work with those gate keepers or not.