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Joi Ito with a spot on post about remembering that most people aren't there yet: sticking my head outside of the echo chamber
I tried to explain very clearly with examples where I thought things were going. I showed blogging, Technorati, Wikipedia, last.fm, Creative Commons and talked about the future of the music, telecom, and copyright. I could see a few people understood what I was talking about, but there were several hundred people who were politely attentive, but didn't seem to be smiling.
Later, at the party, one of the younger members told me that most of the people in the association still programmed on mainframe computers in COBOL and viewed the primary disruptive threat as low cost outsourcing to Asia. They didn't really use the Internet yet. Oops. I guess I missed my target. Sorry! That's what happens when I stick my head out of the echo chamber. I guess I should probably do it a bit more so I remind myself that social software is not really "here" yet. For some people, the Internet is barely here...
I get similarly lost in this world - and it's only when I see the looks of incomprehension when I'm talking about some of this stuff that I remember that we're still struggling to clearly talk about why this stuff is good in ways that the "man in the street" getss.
Oh - and why does me saying "Wiki" seem to frighten people ?
Interesting... I have similar issues when it comes to explaining blogging as a technology that can be harnessed to meet a consumer need to capture and publish life "in the moment". One technique that seems to help get this across to business types is the use of a timeline that describes the evolution of what is to come and then to point out the ages today of those consumers who will be using the tools of the future - i.e. their pre-teen and teenage kids ;).