This post is almost "off topic", and does not follow up on the series I announced in my previous post. Think I've forgot what I was thinking of then, but I'll surely get back to software and architecture later.
The background for this post is that I can not help myself getting frustrated over uninformed criticism over social media that a lot of old hat media seems to love these days.
Social media is, by many, viewed as a tornado of (useless/disconnected) information. On the other hand it is easy to find examples of constructive use of social media, that provides extremely useful information and knowledge to it's readers. For some examples look at my blogger following on the side of my blog. Sometimes I get irritated when people has strong negative opinions against social media (especially microblogging), stating it makes us dumber and unable to concentrate anymore. Well that is up to the individual to decide what to make of it, and decide to pick up a book instead of e.g. "hypertweeting".
I have stumbled upon extremely useful knowledge on Twitter, blogs and more professional web publishers, reading and discussing it through social media's unique features. My opinion is that social media is a whole lot better way of staying informed and increasing your knowledge than watching TV. Well at least a lot of what is distributed via TV is not exactly what tickles your brain to think.
To be really interesting in the social media space you will have to consume considerable amount of information, and possess the capability to transform and magnify this information to your readers. This requires deep concentration and is exactly how it always has been. Just think of ancient Greek philosophers. Some have large information processing capability and others not. Given that some has better capabilities than others, everyone can improve their skills. Social media provides the best training ground ever for improving the skill to express your knowledge. As Chris Anderson says in The Long Tail, the tools for expressing yourself in public writing has been democratized.
In my view expressing and discussing your knowledge is probably the most valuable thing a person can do for oneself and society in general. The ability to express your knowledge through writing is more important than ever. I am a strong believer of knowledge is key to improve individuals and mankind. Each and everyone should acquire the knowledge they need to make informed decisions for themselves or in a position as a decision maker for others such as leaders and politicians. With social media it is even possible to discuss things on a completely democratic way before things is realized.
