Clunky Flow

danah boyd’s keynote at etech gently reminds us that techies have a natural blind spot that keeps many social media technologies from making mass market magic. 

(Aside: If you like this talk you’ll love her less gentle riff from Supernova in 2004 explaining how techhead culture produces socially inept social software by default.)

 

But back danah at etech 2007, here’s the bare bones of the message:
 

From a techno-elite perspective, it’s easy to strut our feathers, celebrate our wizardry, and mock those who don’t understand what it is that we do.

Perhaps the magic is not in the technology, but in the practices that emerge from the seedlings we put out into the world?

It is my belief that if we stare solely at the technology, we lose track of the true magic that exists around us.

Technologies become ubiquitous when people stop thinking of them as a technology and simply use them as a regular part of everyday life.

Many of you value technology for technology sake; this value is not shared by your broader peer group.

Startups typically are naive about people’s practices but utterly passionate about technology. If they’re lucky, their technology will reach the hands of a population for whom it will make complete sense. This population will morph their product to meet their needs. And if the startup is not stupid, it will support this morphing, learn from it, and seek to make more and more happy users.

Would it be possible for a culture of profitable startups to emerge that focus on niche audiences by going after the practices and needs that they experience? I should point out here that what i’m proposing is different than creating yet-another social network site or yet-another video sharing site for a niche audience. I’m talking about starting with the social communities and thinking about their practices and needs and designing from there.

The magic isn’t the technology… it’s the stories and connections, the sharing and ideas. It’s the way these technologies serve people’s lives. More importantly, it’s the way technologies serve the lives of *everyday people*, not just technologists.

The spells of technology are complicating the magic of people. Architecture is getting altered. While people adapt the technologies to meet their needs, their lives have to adapt to the ways in which the technology alters reality. It’s a confusing time and technology is playing a huge role in the confusion.

Technology is soaking into the woodwork of society. But we, as technologists, have a responsibility to keep people in mind at all times. Their practices inform us but our unintended consequences affect them.

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