Comments on: Social media is a channel optimised for the insignificant

By: Bits and Pieces: Learning from Great Blog Conversationalists « iThinkEducation.net!

Mon, 06 Apr 2009 21:12:37 +0000

[...] the original post alone. Sometimes the topic is rather silly–at least on the surface, such as Jim’s recent post about blogs and the insignificant – and he covers such a range of topics and pushes out more posts than seems humanly possible, [...]

By: Dean Shareski

Dean Shareski — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 01:12:13 +0000

Your thoughts are beginning to unravel a bit more here. So let’s strip away the technology for a moment, can we simply equate this to the value of “small talk”?

It’s s social norm that most of us use, not only to establish trust and helps us sniff out who we want to hang with and who we don’t, but because we like it.

We also as Chris alludes to can sense the conversations that might lie close to the surface but are waiting for the opportune time and place to emerge.

Not sure if that sheds anymore light but I benefited from this conversation.

By: Reverend

Reverend — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 23:36:44 +0000

Ed,
What a beautiful connection with the stream of Gardner’s always provocative conference tweeting. Relationships and trust are also built around connections like these, the ability to bring people and ideas together seamlessly is a whole ‘nother element of this complex world of social media.

By: Ed Webb

Ed Webb — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 23:25:36 +0000

This is one of the things that makes social media threatening in some educational circles, the disarming, the surrender of institutionally-granted authority: “a conversation that we all have to disarm ourselves to some degree to enter with any kind of success and honesty.”

But it is necessary to take that risk to enable the most powerful kinds of educational experiences, to break down the authority and then build trust, initially through trivial or non-critical interactions:
http://twitter.com/GardnerCampbell/status/1045828716

That the media can enable more substantive exchanges once the trust has been built may be secondary – their power lies in their trust-building affordances, as do their risks.

By: Bits and Pieces: Learning from Great Blog Conversationalists « (the new) bgblogging

Mon, 08 Dec 2008 19:57:10 +0000

By: peter naegele

peter naegele — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 15:00:50 +0000

Ironically, the more I re-read this the more I am doing the very thing I’m suggesting one shouldn’t, namely prescribe a logic or push an idea.

I agree….it’s the novel aspect of the everyday that is driving the interactions. When everyone does it, it’s no longer unique.

By: Reverend

Reverend — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 02:01:29 +0000

Bacon for breakfast, a piece of gravel at your feet, blinking eyes: they’re invitations to talk that are easy to say yes to. Once you do that, anything goes.

@Keira,

Wonderfully put, and it’s the invitation that I’m really missing in this equation. You’re right once we accept that, anything does go. And it is the accepting that which is such a complex phenomenon. But I do think that more times than not the actual frame can be insignificant compared with our desires. Something I don’t think always gels with our structured logic of what is significant in something as broad and general as “education.”

@Alan,
I agree with you in many ways, but it’s just that sometimes a generalization like this sometimes smacks with enough truth that it begs us to think about it some more. And while I don’t think I would leave it here and suggest that’s that, I do often marvel at how many times I’ve labored over an idea or a post I found deeply significant just to find no one really cared or connected—it just went away as a larger dialogue. Whereas other times I threw something out which is just trivial and people can;t say enough about it? I don’t know why. It wasn’t scientific necessarily–at least to me, yet it seemed an invitation for so much more.

I’m not being very circumspect here, I grant you that. But perhaps the insignificance of generalizations is what enables people to jump into conversation so freely and move from there. So you’re right that’s it’s not acceptable, but perhaps not entirely

By: Alan Levine

Alan Levine — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 23:53:26 +0000

I smiled at the effort of the original post, but I suggest the generalization is a bit sweeping to be acceptable. People respond to the silliness, to the absurdity because of the contrast it creates with the pummel onslaught of the “normal” flood of information.

And I have a pile of similar annecdotes of larger responses to trivial posts or tweets. But to say “you can an build engagement with social media on things that are unimportant and irrelevant” I question what is the engagement- it is a short, quick hit. And to sweep equaly broad with “when you say things which, theoretically, would be interesting and useful, paradoxically, no one cares. Social media is a channel optimised for the insignificant.” is to me a gross and mis-placed generalization that sounds cute but has little meat to hang on.

Chris knows where I stand on generalizations.

By the way, I just scratched my elbow.

And, the example I used pre-twitter as an example of blogging too much (and actually foreshadowed twitter) is NOW A WORDPRESS site! Yay
http://www.dullestblog.com/

By: Keira

Keira — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 23:23:05 +0000

I really like this post and this idea. Yeah, what Chris said.

I sit alone in this apartment in beautiful, beautiful Barcelona, really for the first time (H and mom asleep, B at futbol game, listening to Te Recuerdo Amanda by Robert Wyatt, tunage spat up by itunes because streaming is impossible on this shitless wi-fi network. Reading another amazingly generous post by Jim.

It’s kind of embarrassing to quote Mother Theresa: “you can do no great things in life, only small things with great love.” Sometimes it helps me with blank pages and new people and even more tentatively, with this great, blinking screen.

Bacon for breakfast, a piece of gravel at your feet, blinking eyes: they’re invitations to talk that are easy to say yes to. Once you do that, anything goes.

By: Andrea

Andrea — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 22:11:08 +0000

Ah, like the stranger-on-a-bus syndrome. You’d tell a complete stranger about all kinds of personal issues and feelings, knowing you will most likely never see them again, but the kind of things you tell them are those that need to be said. usually to someone else.

I think I had a piece of homemade fudge for breakfast. And a cup of tea. I can’t quite remember, I got up too early.

Also, I have noticed that a large number of social connections I have – because of commonalities – do tend to discuss things we don’t actually have in common. Which is neat.