The following was my chapter proposal which was accepted for a new academic/business book titled:

Social Knowledge: Using Social Media to Know What You Know

The book is now available for purchase at IGI-Global.

Proposal Copy:

Paul Otlet envisioned a mechanized system of shared knowledge back in the early twentieth century. As a peace activist he believed strongly in the transformative nature of freely sharing all of the world’s knowledge as a way of bringing understanding across the globe.

Mr. Otlet had conceived of a system of hyperlinks which not only bound information together but expanded on the understanding of the information by providing context. Unfortunately, given the era and the mechanism he envisioned being purely analog was too significant a technological barrier for the system he dreamt about to become reality.

Not quite a century later you arrive at the modern digital world. In 1993 Tim Berners-Lee devised a system of hyperlinked documents that connect back and forth to each other, forming what he called the World Wide Web. Paul Otlet’s vision had not been fully achieved but an incredible milestone had. The final component was to add context to the hyperlinks so that the information could be turned into social knowledge.

As we move beyond the second decade of the World Wide Web (aka Web 2.0 or the Social Web) the realization of context through a combination of meta-data and machine awareness is starting to bear fruit. The coming decades of this digital world should prove extraordinary in the history of technology.

But moving to a world of freely shared, contextual information has far more than a mere technological challenge to overcome. A world such as this has a terrific cultural barrier to overcome as well. Paul Otlet’s vision wasn’t just to create knowledge but to extend it so far as to bring world peace. Our goal is to scale the cultural changes down to the organization and individual. Creating a culture shift at these points should, in fact, have global ramifications. Will they bring about world peace? Maybe not, but they surely will change the way we understand our world.

Within most organizations there lies a wealth of information which is locked away due to both technological and cultural constraints. This chapter will deal with the way that the technological changes in the personal lives of individuals are having a direct effect on the cultural constraints of organizations. The current cultural barriers will be explained in detail along side of current technological concerns that are offering both an opportunity to remove the barrier as well as examples of how this is already being done or might be done.

Through example I will break down the following 10 cultural barriers to embracing social media and the resulting social knowledge.

• The desire to maintain a separation of personal and professional life.
• The concern that use of social media will cause time management issues.
• The fear of exposing oneself or ones efforts to scrutiny.
• The fear of new technology and remaining relevant.
• The security risk inherent in sharing information socially.
• The legal reporting requirements faced by some individuals and organizations.
• The flattening of organizational hierarchy and what that might mean for management.
• The loss of control over subordinates or project scope.
• The loss of competitive advantage.
• The overall fear of a Big Brother organization or society.

The use of social media such as Facebook has created an interesting dichotomy of online persona. On one hand are the very personal relationships in what we used to consider our private life; on the other are the public expressions of those personal relationships and the unforgiving persistence of data in the digital world. Within the United States the prevailing cultural norm has been to expect some level of privacy within your personal life. This is the basis of several of our laws related both to technology and healthcare.

By cultivating an online persona, whether expressly for private or professional use, there must be no expectation of privacy. As we push to utilize these same tools within our community and professional organizations the question arises as to whether or not it is useful to try and separate our private online persona from our professional.

In the physical world this is impossible. What we are learning about the digital world is that separation is similarly counterproductive. Individuals must become more aware of how living their life online influences all aspects of their life: public and private, physical and digital. Similarly, organizations who hire these individuals now have to consider the management of every employee as a potential spokesperson.

When the line blurs between personal and professional life, many organizations fear that the use of social media will cause productivity to drop and time management to falter. In response many have chosen to block these applications all together.

If there is no, or little, distinction between personal and professional online persona then there can similarly be little to no distinction between personal and professional time. These tools can be used to dramatically increase productivity but they require a shift in how management interacts with employees, and how management understands a new, 24 hour time clock.

Under the constraints of a global economy we already expect workers to perform with greater flexibility of time and thus the use of social media merely allows for even greater agility.

A component of all of this public exposure is scrutiny. How many times have you had a coworker, staff member or supervisor who did not pull their weight within the organization? Living transparently provides workers who are well suited for their position to shine while exposing those who might be better repositioned.

For some organizations this could be an opportunity for cost savings while others may see this as an opportunity to reorganize; learning about their employees’ strengths and interests and then better utilizing them.

Public scrutiny, offered constructively, can also open many doors for individuals and organizations by providing advice that otherwise could be costly. At times a fresh set of eyes can see things that others miss.

The vast difference in skill and experience related to using social media creates a fear within the workplace. Social media has presented the world with a sea change in how we interact, making it significant in terms of socio-technological shifts. However, from a standpoint of pure technology, this change is not unlike others we have seen in the past. Craftsman and laborers giving way to machines and robots, secretarial pools giving way to administrative assistants as desktop computing replaced Dictaphones and typewriters.

A singular difference for social media is that it has been adopted first in the home and then transferred to the office, meaning it is much more accessible even to the layperson. Often workplace adoption of new technologies can be staggered by generational differences. Adoption of social media is rapidly crossing generational lines though, further removing this barrier.

One primary source of fear directly related to the technology is the fear of identity theft, or the theft of intellectual property. On a personal level this has the potential of ruining ones’ financial security, at the organizational level this could be devastating both financially and to the organization’s reputation.

Security has always been a combination of technology and culture. Secure passwords, cautious browsing and guarded interaction online can be prompted by technological solutions but only work when users are in a cultural of awareness. I predict in the near future our more open use of social media will actually become our protection.

In much the same way I can identify a close friend by sight, a computer will learn enough about our online persona to “know” when we are who we say we are – or not. For systems to engage people at that level, and for individuals to feel comfortable with that intimacy, we will require new legislation.

Currently the so-called Sunshine Laws provide citizens in the United States with a level of government transparency. Private organizations have far fewer requirements to act in a transparent way.

Transparency laws, the policies that follow them and the individuals administering them, directly affect the cultural opinions of transparency based on how they administer those laws. Some administrators take a narrow view on transparency requirements.

“Open Source” as an ideal beyond just software suggests that all organizations should be fully transparent. The effect would be to then put individuals and organizations on more equal footing as social knowledge becomes freely transferrable.

The history of organizations has been one of providing data from worker to supervisor, and then disseminating the data from that point as management sees fit. Technology developed around this idea of hierarchy based workflow. The result being a cultural by-product of standalone and silo data which has helped maintain that now inefficient hierarchy.

Individuals have discovered the power of crowdsourcing through social media, exploiting the social knowledge on a very basic level, at home and in their communities. These people then bring this very efficient way of learning and collaborating into their organizations; causing change from the bottom up.

Standalone and silo data are not inherently transparent and provide the hierarchy with a base of command and control. The more rigid organization’s internal controls are for workflow the more likely that social media adoption is being fought. Opening up this data is a fundamental step towards changing the hierarchal culture.

Utilizing social media as a way of building collaboration across organizations will help flatten hierarchy and will change the control structure over subordinates and projects. Here again we have an opportunity for public scrutiny which can provide an individual or organization with a chance to make significant changes.

At the project or organizational level this public scrutiny may also be seen as an assault on competitive advantage. Management may fear a drop in market share. Looking at the internet development model suggests this isn’t true. Goods and services are being crowdsourced online; that which can be freely used is, while those things that have actual value added are still being bought and sold.

Broad collaboration can provide far superior goods and services than are available today. The vision to see those goods and services to market is what will create profit. Competitive advantage will be calculated more by the quality of the collaboration you can build than by the secrecy surrounding your product.

The final cultural challenge is that of the Big Brother state. While still broadly considered a fear of government the (re)entry of private contractors into the police enforcement and defense market creates a growing fear of this same phenomenon happening via private sector. Massive data collection without oversight in the private sector has similarly added to the fear of a private Big Brother state.

This raises the final cultural question: who owns the data that makes up an individual’s online persona? Through radical transparency these concerns can be alleviated. Introduction of transparent processes and open source data resources at both public and private organizations would allow for watchdog groups to be effective. However, in our current culture the lack of trust between individuals, private and public organizations may prove to be too large a gap to bridge.

These cultural issues are as important to reference and detail as the technology surrounding them. I believe that comfort with the technology and greater use of social knowledge for positive change will break through many of these cultural roadblocks.