Technology = boring?

So I was miffed I didn't get sent an advance copy of Clay Shirky's new book Here Comes Everybody.

But James Cherkoff over at Modern Marketing has a great quote from the book:

"Communication tools don't get socially interesting until they get technologically boring.  The invention of a tool doesn't create change: it has to have been round long enough that most of society is using it."

Tis is something I've been known to bang on about before and chimes nicely with some thinking I've been doing this morning around ideologies in the 21st Century. Hopefully more to come...

Technorati tags: James Cherkoff, Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody

Comments

[Matt Dickman]

Simon -- I take exception to this point. Technology doesn't have to be boring to be social, it needs to be invisible. The less we perceive the technology behind the services we're using the more adoption will take place. Our goal as marketers is not to use boring technology, but to make the technology work so well with our campaigns that the end user doesn't notice them.

There is a *lot* of non-boring, very complex technology behind sites like Amazon and Facebook. The reason that they excel is that the user experience is where they put their focus. As a user it makes sense to just use the site and the technology gets out of the way.

[Simon Collister]

I hear what you're saying entirely Matt! I was only quoting Clay because I thought it was a nice, neat quote that made an important point - to an extent.

Of course technology doesn't have to be boring to be social. In fact, depending on who you're looking to engage with technology could be a key feature!