Subway Map of the Net

Information Architects Map of the Net

In the world I work in we are forever trying to find context to the technology changes we are living in. This has caused me to do some deep thinking on where social media/networking/relevance will end up on the scale of impact on the human race. In fact, just the concept of having an impact scale for technology has become interesting to me. Shouldn’t we have a one through ten scale that rates the impact of a category of technology so that we can at least debate how much impact one has in relation to another? This kind of thing at least makes us have to think through the ramifications of what we are inventing.

Allow me to explain… I think mainframes are a three on our scale, and I have to be able give the reasons for that or this whole discussion is just conceptual. So this means I have to define “impact” on the human race of technology. Just for fun, here are the factors I am going to include in my impact measurement, and all of these have equal weight with one being the least impact, and ten the most.

  • Impact on our individual quality of life including our happiness, peacefulness, earning power, comfort, health, and emotional well being
  • Impact on the economy, the structure of companies, and where revenue comes from
  • Impact on our efficiency of time (can we get more done in less time, or simply not have to invest time in tasks at all)
  • Impact on culture and society
  • Impact on political systems, warfare, and national relationships
  • Impact on the environment
  • Impact on the Truth (the ability of the human race to record things accurately, and publish information that is true and correct)

Imagine that this is a scorecard that we can use to give a one through ten score on each of these bullet points for every major technology innovation. By doing this we can then compare the relative impact on the human race. OK, with that explained, let’s get back to scoring where social technologies sits versus other innovations. As I said, I think mainframes are a three. I think personal computers would be a 5.5 because they have clearly had more impact on our lives. Just for comparison, email would be a 2.3 for me. The Internet itself is hard to rate because it is such a pervasive platform that is enabling other concepts like ecommerce and social tech. So the problem is I almost have to rate the Web as a ten in order to keep the relative score in line for the innovations that are based on the use of the Web. In my case I am going to rate the Internet simply as a transport system and storage system and not treat it as the father of the other innovations that use it. In this case, I rate the Internet as a 6.5 and will consider it as Web 0.0.

Mobile technology (cell phones, PDA’s, mobile devices) would rate a 5.2 on my scale, just below their larger brothers, the PC’s. Remote controls for the television would be 3.5 for me because I was raised in the days when I personally was the remote control for my parents so this was a huge improvement. Word processing software is clearly a 4.8 because it has completely changed our ability to not only create documents quickly, it also has allowed us to share them instantly with anyone and everyone in the world. So you get the idea here…

The two most interesting innovations to rate at the moment are ecommerce and social technologies, or Web 1.0 and Web 2.0. Ecommerce has huge potential to alter an ever-increasing amount of industries as product and service dynamics change. As both become more commoditized, sales on the Web grow, and this has a ripple effect in the bricks and mortar world. In addition, ecommerce breaks down geographic and size barriers so sellers of all sizes and in every country can compete. Long and short is the score for ecommerce is 7.2.

Social technologies are in the embryonic stage at the moment so for this one I will have to play out how concepts like crowdsourcing, citizen journalism, online reputation, ecommunities, online rating systems, and location based marketing will end up. This may surprise you, but I end up scoring social tech at 8.3. So let the debate begin! My observation is that the Internet is a transport protocol and connection platform and is great infrastructure. Ecommerce is radically changing the game in the marketplace for many (but not all) organizations. Social technologies will touch everyone in the world, personally and professionally. They are more important than the Internet in general because they are a specific use of it. Much like the television, as an application, is more important than the underlying innovation of producing glass or metal.

My scores could be right on, or radically off base. The more important concept is the debate as to the relative impact of various technologies on the world. Let me know what you think, I am curious if you see it differently…

Scott Klososky
Scott@klososky.com