Reading Cosmopolitan & Alvin Toffler: the true value of social media

Orson Welles, in full cigar-chewing glory, narrates the 1972 documentary Future Shock, his imposing frame and deep voice introducing the film as an airport travelator carries him toward the camera. Welles appears contemplative throughout the film, portraying a weariness reflecting the documentary’s message that rapid change is alienating and distressing society. Although he is known as one of the greatest directors of all time, the message Welles delivers is not his own.

Instead, the concept of ‘Future Shock’ comes from someone most New Zealanders only known of through the Dance Exponents and their 1982 song, Victoria.

She’s up in time to watch the soap opera, Reads cosmopolitan and Alvin Toffler, Meeting in the places that she’s never been to, She’s got a mind but it’s the clothes they see through.

Alvin and Heidi Toffler first introduced Future Shock in a 1965 journal article before expanding it in a wildly successful book five years later. For the Tofflers, the rapid rate of change in their world was causing mass disorientation on an alarming scale. They saw society as becoming increasingly transient, temporary, and defined by novelty and fads. Information overload, another Toffler term, was defined by our desire to consume knowledge being unable to cope with the rate of knowledge production.

In the words of another 1970s author, this was “Bad! Bad! Bad! Bad!”

Their book, Future Shock, has sold more than 6 million copies amid an audience who would combat Future Shock in the 1970s, Computerphobia in the 1980s, and the threat of Y2K in the 1990s. Today, many look to Future Shock as a prediction for the future we are now living and attempting to heed the warning it sounds in their work and relationships. To them, the Toffler future to be avoided is painted as

… a picture of people who were isolated and depressed, cut off from human intimacy by a relentless fire hose of messages and data barraging us relentlessly.

Others, like Shel Israel who penned the interpretation above, find Future Shock accurate in the world it describes but off the mark in terms of its pessimism and despair. Israel, again, best contextualises the Toffler future alongside a culture of connection,

Everything Toffler looked at was accurate. The media and technology floods have come but humans and the future seem to always have a way of surprising you.

Where he saw isolation, I see connection. We find people all over the world who share our interests. We turn to technology to find people who will support, mentor, nurture, teach advise and argue with us.

Today, we can perhaps best see both sides of the future the Tofflers described in social media. For many, it is a relentless barrage of valueless information that isolates and creates despair — it is shocking. For others, however, we see what Shel Israel sees: a world where technology has overcome our transience and embraced our desire to learn.

The story is the same, only the perspective is different. If we shift the perspective on social media, perhaps even the most despairing can find value.

If you put “the value of social media” in to your favourite search engine, chances are you’ll be hit with a raft of results from marketing practitioners, businesses, and services, each professing to have the answers to determining the Return On Investment (ROI) of using social media. This is the prevailing interpretation of value, where the capacity to monetise and make profit are the accepted measures.

Businesses drive this interpretation of value, yet they are quickly adding momentum to a rising Value Economy which is determined by purpose, instead of profit. For the workers on the consumer side of this economy, the value added by their employers has to improve more than just their working life. An improved work/life balance is a constant pursuit and employees are increasingly expecting their workplace to support and foster this. This has led to a global community of companies who are striving for environmental and inclusive accreditations, increasing wellbeing initiatives for staff, and engaging in partnerships with their communities. These purpose-driven programmes add value to the business through valuing lives and the environment.

The disconnect remains, however, and the new generation of productivity ‘gurus’ are often, somewhat paradoxically, pushing insights that fail to truly embrace the Value Economy. Many of their philosophies are so intently focused on work that live outside of that is viewed as an inconvenience to be overcome. The resulting ways of working are isolating and exhausting, the manifestation of the fears within Future Shock.

One of the areas where the productivity paradox and value mis-alignments play out is social media. These theorists deride it as valueless, mindless, nothing but a time waster. In spite of that, they regularly have a presence on multiple channels and, when asked where their followers can connect with them, push people to these accounts. While some meaningless ROI metric is likely to be driving their presence, social media content finds an audience when it is authentic. For content to be authentic, it must have value on both sides. There is where a Shel Israel-led shift in perspective needs to happen.

To drive this perspective shift, and alleviate the fears of both Future Shock and productivity theorists, the starting point is to encourage users, particularly businesses, to see social media as more than just a tool for ‘pushing’ messages. Whether creating content for external or internal audiences, too many users simply push out content without engaging in a conversation. This feeds in to the isolation the Tofflers feared was in the cards for our future.

That imagined future was one with less friends, less connection. A world suffering from Future Shock featured an increasingly transient population which made it harder to build and maintain friendships. They failed to account for the rise of social technologies that enable us to not only stay connected with existing friends on a global scale, but also to make new friends the world over.

Simply being present on social media allows us to get to know our communities, identify the people and organisations who share our passions and purpose, and to find perspectives that challenge our own. Beyond that, we can engage in conversations we would be unlikely to have in other spaces within our lives. There is undoubtedly a dark side to the anonymity of the internet but, when we’re conscious of its connection value, it can allow an openness and vulnerability that many of us would otherwise struggle with.

Ultimately, if we think we’re putting out messages worth reading and engaging with, then we should have some respect for the others who share that belief. In the words of Shel Israel,

I see connection.