or From TCP/IP to Social Protocols...
This morning Valdis Krebs emailed me a link to an article by InfoWorld writer Jon Udell [arguably one of the Internet's greatest thinkers] on -- The social enterprise.
Jon Udell has a way of languaging the intersections of social and technical issues in a manner that is simultaneously deep and yet infinitely easy to understand. Jon's assertion -- "Our social protocols map poorly to TCP/IP" led me to further ponder TCP/IP -- around for over 25 years and constructed around the premise of single sender, single receiver connection links carrying connectionless packets. TCP came of age in a 'wireline' world -- our increasing reliance on wireless networks for social and knowledge networking poses new challenges.
As I sat here ruminating about the limitations of TCP/IP, I could hear Clay Shirky in the back of my mind saying: "Don't worry about standards... Think about interoperability..." The interoperability I am thinking about is between knowledge workers and their employers, their teams, their tools, their products, and their customers.
In this article on 'The social enterprise' -- Jon talks about Tacit's ActiveNet, Ross Mayfield's Socialtext Wiki & Weblog hosted workspaces, Traction's 'enterprise Weblog software,' Groove's workspaces, Visible Path's 'relationship-mining engine,' and Spoke Software's 'enterprise networking.'
I actively evangelize the tools that Jon writes about in this article on "The social enterprise." The practices and cultural underpinnings necessary to make any and/or all of these offerings successful are not small -- especially in an economy where there is often more fear than fun in the workplace.
In his final questions Jon asks, "Can transparency and privacy coexist?" As an active proponent of creating robust social and knowledge networking environments within large enterprises -- the larger the enterprise, the more attractive the challenge -- I have seen and/or been a part of some remarkable successess but -- only in environments where trust, transparency, technology, and privacy were addressed both pro-actively and continuously.
Will enterprises keep and cultivate more 'knowledge workers' with the adoption of these tools and practices? Will these collaboration enhancing vehicles -- incorporating trust, technology, and privacy -- help ease the transition from the last thrashing vestiges of an Industrial Age into a viable Virtual Age?
Related Links:
The social enterprise | InfoWorld
Privacy in the age of transparency | CNET News.com
Transparency & Trust Bloom Great Ideas | Fast Company Now
Trust, Technology and Privacy | University of Aberdeen
Hi Judith - Nice point about transparency and privacy.
-- Knowledge work often comes with the need for various levels of privacy, but must be related in various ways to less private information. We do this well.
-- There is a need for systems able to scan a mixture of public and private spaces, and then, only where relevant or necessary, join people or information that would otherwise be separated by rules or regulations. This is very true in law enforcement but has many enterprise truisms too. Tacit excels in this area.
Best Regards, Jordan
Posted by: Jordan Frank at March 29, 2004 02:40 PM