Reading the (thankfully) continuing debate about the “inclusivity or exclusivity” nature of social media recruitment, I was reminded of the famous quote by Alvin Toffler, the prophet of the digital revolution. Writing in his seminal book Future Shock in 1970, he noted that: "When dealing with the future, it is more important to be imaginative and insightful than to be 100% right."

Toffler compared the futurologist's role to that of the ancient mapmakers, approximating the danger and promise of an unknown world. And that is where we’re at: at the beginning of a journey rather than at the final destination. So it’s not perverse to argue that Social Media is both inclusive and enfranchising, as well as potentially excluding and even discriminatory (due to lack of access). The real discussion, of course, is ‘where do we go from here?’ – how truly universal will social media really become. One thing is for sure: as technology redefines and remaps our world virtually, the companies driving its development are the new mapmakers. So where are they taking us?

Companies like Face book are feverishly searching the potential of interaction on the web. So far, that has primarily meant entering text into a search box – dipping into a pool for the fish we know we want. Google, which has a 90% share of the UK search market, has already built a $197bn business on the back of advertising related to those text searches.

So far, so profitable. But the next generation of the web, so Face book wants us to believe, will be navigated through our social graph, our network of contacts and friends; it will be their recommendations that will prompt us to dip into the water. Though the social web is well established, the business model around it is not. This is the new horizon. And the volume and reach of data produced by Face book’s users – and the promise of the future of the social web – has investors so excited that they have just valued the company at $50bn. Toffler was on to something.

Where is Face book heading? For now its priority is to keep growing its nascent advertising revenues ($2bn last year, by one estimate) and its user numbers, currently put at 733 million monthly users globally, according to comScore. But it’s also laying the foundations for some powerful ways of extending the site. Last August it introduced Places, which allows users to share their location with friends, and in December announced that photo uploads would soon be scanned with facial recognition technology.

Already, one-third of Face book’s traffic is generated by mobile, and as these devices become ubiquitous we will become less reliant on a fixed screen. Often described as the next generation of the web, mobile's real breakthrough has been the success of apps in the past two-and-a-half-years. Not only are these devices always on and always with us, but they offer more forms of interaction than desktop computers, including movement sensitivity, camera and a web connection.

From an Inclusivity perspective, there’s clearly an issue here: if you don’t have a mobile, you’re being excluded (obviously). However, the trade off is that these location features provide the platform and possibility of a world that, not so long ago would have belonged in an ambitious work of science fiction. Augmented reality (AR) is a technique of overlaying information on an image of the real world, usually through our phone's camera. Despite the current clunky incarnations, augmented reality may well become the principal way that the digital world is presented to us. Freed from screens, information will float, contextually, accompanying the user and imparting – probably via a pair of augmented reality glasses – the time of the next bus, messages from a friend in a nearby pub, or a local match from your dating site. Everything you do now at your desktop will be superimposed in real time in the world around you.

Whether this creates a more inclusive world remains to be seen – but we’re looking at an incredible world, that’s for sure.

This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it is Director of Communications for Equality Law, the Equality & Inclusivity consultancy. He has won 34 CIPD and RAD Awards during more than 20 years of creating engaging and inclusive employment and workplace communications.

Last update : 19-05-2011 09:08

Keywords : Facebook leaps into a future more engaging, but is it any more inclusive?

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