From the age of the Masses to the age of the Self

For nearly two centuries now we’ve been living in the industrial age. Concepts originally deriving from our steam-originated ability to produce in mass have been shaping our civilization and the way we’ve been thinking.

Until the last decade. Until now.

We are witnessing a transition from an age of the masses to an age of the individual, emphasizing self-expression, uniqueness and personal innovation. The “information” part of our economy (tech, media, entertainment) is more and more distributed, relying on user-generated content consumed by niche markets through self-organized channels. At the same time, information products are occupying an ever-growing part of the system.

And this is not just the economy, either. Our ideas are no longer derived from paper-carried ideologies distributed following a hierarchical model. On blogs and social platforms, expression runs free. User-generated concepts propagate and gain a life of their own.

We are now entering an age of the Self.

 

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How the Cognitive Social Web can foster an Internet of better contents

Current web 3.0-oriented products tend to concentrate on how to better organize and develop the flow of information (how to share more content more easily, how to reach a larger crowd, how to get more of the content you already spend the most time on, etc), while mostly ignoring the psychological aspects of content sharing and content creation.

This results in awesome communication tools that are used mostly in dynamics of collective stupidity. Don’t see what I mean? Check out the current trending topics on Twitter –a fantastic product as far as sharing is concerned. That’s what the web of the future could be about: sharing more mediocrity, more easily. Incredible technology at the service of your mind farts. Is this what we really need?

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