Social computing phobias

My editor at Information World Review asked me to write a piece about "why organisations are scared of social computing." My instinctive reaction was "why do such a negative piece?" Then I realised that this was a straight reporting job - a case of finding out what people thought of social computing and why. I'd already written many positive articles and columns on the subject.

So I wrote it. It was plonked on paper and distributed to subscribers. I thought it sad that it wasn't online because it would help those of us involved in social software to understand those who resist it.

Well, I was astonished to get an email from Al Tepper - the City Hippy blogger - who found the article, "Genie in a bottle" online. He is mentioned in it, as are fellow bloggers Suw Charman and Neil Macehiter.

The main sections are: Losing control, Never trust an employee, Heard it all before, Rejecting social computing and Hierarchy anarchy.

I take my hat off to the sub-editors who cooked up these cross-heads. Much better than my original headings:

"Why bosses reject social computing" was divided into: Control; Leaks; Trust; Sharing power; Heard it all before; Cost/benefit; Regulation; and, Who needs it?

"Why staff reject social computing"was divided into: Extra work; Embarrassment; Subversion; The game’s up; and, Power shift.

Researching it and writing it was an eye-opening exercise. I hope you find it useful.

Comments

[Marcel de Ruiter]

David,

To be honest, the article made me very sad, and at the same time wondering in what kind of organisation I work. Doing some experiments with wiki's and seeing already the first employee blogging activity in "my" 100.000+ company (banking!!), I surely hope we are at the good and innovative site of the "social software phobia devide".

Still it was a very nice article David. Thanks!

Best regards,
Marcel

[David Tebbutt]

Today, I cheered myself up by visiting Ross Mayfield at Socialtext in Palo Alto. It was very cheering to see the positive side of social software.

Thanks for your note. Sorry I made you sad.