The Revolution Will Not Be Twitterized
Arguably the inventor of rap music—and undeniably a unique voice of our time—Gil Scott-Heron is today most famous for an April 1971 track called “The Revolution Will Not be Televised.”
“…the revolution will not be brought to you by Xerox in four parts without commercial interruption…will not give you sex appeal, nor make you look five pounds lighter…will not go better with Coke…”.
The message—as I hear it—making change is not a casual, part-time activity. Done seriously, it can be hazardous to your being.
Here’s a short video of Scott-Heron:
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
Uploaded by mallox. – Music videos, artist interviews, concerts and more.
Decades later, Malcolm Gladwell nods to Scott-Heron to say something similar about the television of our age—New Social Media (New Yorker, October 4, 2010: "Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not be Tweeted.")
In his inimitable style, Gladwell first digs deep into the early days of the Civil Rights movement in the US—February 1960, to be precise—to show how a 4-person sitdown strike morphed into sitdown strikes across the south involving 70,000 students. All done, as he notes, without Twitter.
Then—as usual—Gladwell brings in the counterpoint. In this case, new social media. With an undertone of annoyance, Gladwell quotes State Department officials, old media reporters, and new media darling Clay Shirky. They all gush about the power of Twitter and Facebook to affect global political events, and to mobilize masses of people behind crucial movements.
Bahh, says Gladwell. Don’t confuse getting people to contribute thirty-five cents from the comfort of their armchair with a willingness to go get your head broken in support of a cause. And, suggests Gladwell, it is the latter—not the former—that turns out to be at the heart of social change.
Change requires risk. Serious change is done in numbers; but in small numbers, with real ‘friends’ beside you. The ‘friends’ you have on Facebook don’t deliver that kind of support.
Personal and Impersonal Trust
The debate Gladwell is raising is nominally about social media. It does raise a related trust issue, however. To what extent does our extended connectivity and interdependence increase trust?
Let me go back to the Trust Equation to suggest an answer. The Trust Equation (actually an equation for trustworthiness) is
(C + R + I)
S
Where:
C = credibility
R = reliability
I = intimacy
S = self-orientation
When people talk about new technologies allowing for the creation of greater trust, they are often talking about the first two elements of credibility and reliability—especially the latter.
· We ‘trust’ that the sun will rise in the east;
· We ‘trust’ Amazon’s suggestions for us because they are hugely data-based;
· We ‘trust’ eBay’s ratings of sellers because they are aggregated and mediated;
At the same time, that kind of trust doesn’t mean I’d introduce my daughter to anyone at Amazon or eBay, or even lend anyone there ten dollars. Because that’s not the kind of trust you get from knowing people.
A site like Match.com is a more interesting case, because it uses large impersonal aggregation to go after the kinds of interpersonal trust that are missing in a low-dollar commercial purchase. Scale alone is a huge attraction; but the impersonality of the medium, applied to a relationship game, means the dating sites have had to evolve various ways of mimicking the very personal process we have of getting to ‘really’ know other people. Winking, poking, are a few; they mimic the range of halting gestures people make toward each other in early stages; profiles and the ‘just lunch’ concept are others.
Gladwell’s specific point about revolutionary politics is an instance of a more general point about trust: Trust Is Personal. I’m talking about the Intimacy and the Self-Orientation kinds of trust mainly. I mean the kind of trust we need if we’re to do serious interactions, one on one, or movement-on-establishment.
If I don’t ‘trust’ my Toyota, I may go find a Ford. If I don’t ‘trust’ my ‘friend’ on Facebook, I may complain about him to my other ‘friends.’
But if I’m a civil rights activist in the 1960s, or an Iranian dissident today—I’m not going to risk my behind if the only one who’s got my back is a Twitter friend.
Said Scott-Heron, “You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out…the revolution will not be on instant replay…there will be no highlights on the 11:00 news…the revolution will not be…” twitterized.
The Real Stuff is still pretty Personal.