Put Up or Shut Up

Put Up or Shut Up is the title of an excerpt from Chapter 1 of Who Owns the Future.  This section of the book spoke to me the most because Jaron Lanier speaks his mind about people always discussing quitting Facebook.  His answer is that no one can tell you the right thing to do in this situation, and the outcome is completely up to you.  He even says, "You have to decide for yourself.  I am not trying to be anyone's guru."  I agree with him in this aspect.  The choice is completely personal, but Jaron believes the network causes people to pointlessly dilute themselves on cultural, intellectual, and spiritual levels by fawning over digital superhuman phenomena that doesn't necessarily exist.  This is a very powerful statement, but I can definitely relate his thought to actual people in my community.      

Social Organization = Intelligence + strategy

In order to have the best social organization within a working community, their needs to be the right mix of intelligence and strategy.  I believe that this rule contributes to the success of the most advanced and efficient users of social media.  As I learned in Chapter 5 of The Social Organization; setting a vision for community collaboration is important.  If the people in the community are targeted, specific, and have an engaging purpose they will be the most ideal to participate.  It is also important to implement purposes for each aspect of social media; for example, job networking, community assimilation, bible study.  This is a technique used to entice people to participate.  If there is a central vision within the organization and all of the members work together, I believe that they are more likely to succeed in meeting their goals.  

Too Social For Business?

It is hard to tell now days if social media within a business is the best idea to advertise.  There have been many examples of social media actually being a threat towards certain organizations.  When consumers are more efficient with the social media a company is using or if that company has not kept up with their page or cite, it can be a place for customers to advertise their bad experiences or negative relations toward the company.  In the reading, I learned that the best way a company can deal with these problems is policy rather than strategy.  And without a thoughtful approach, "their social media problems will only get worse.  We also heard an example of this in class; David's Bridal.The organization that I am studying could use social media to advertise.  This is not always the first decision in a company because now there are so many negative attributes associated with social media programs.  The only way a company can successfully use social media to promote is if they; have the most knowledge about the subject within the community, mass collaboration, and the fundamental principles of behavior.  

Who Owns The Future?

In the prelude and first chapter of Who Owns The Future, Jaron Lanier strives to explain how powerful the influence of technology is becoming in today's society.  Lanier poses the belief that replacing old services or organizations with smarter technology is not always a good thing.  The example in the prelude that caught my eye was how Kodak films was completely wiped away from the industry solely because of Instagram.  Now days people are using technology not only to make their lives more efficient, but instead they are using it to try and replace everyday tasks just because users are lazy.  The mindset today is if you can not do a task on your own, our first instinct would be to search for an app that can, or just "google it."  Books and libraries are soon going to be not as commonly used.  This could be a problem because we are just letting technology take over.  It seems like everyday technology might even be gaining power over us.  Jaron Lanier does a great job of expressing his input and helps us to understand the severity of how booming technology could potentially effect our future.   

Mass Collaboration-Within My Organization

The field I am studying this semester is property management.  I believe that there are all kinds of entrepreneurship opportunities to expand on.  The use of mass collaboration within the industry is key to success and growth.  The organization that I chose to research is Olivieri Management.  I currently live in a house owned and managed by this company.  Located specifically near Central University’s main campus, Olivieri Management owns many homes in the Mount Pleasant area.  The main reason I chose this company is because I think there can be many more things done to ensure customer satisfaction and ease of scheduled payments.

Olivieri management can use mass collaboration in many ways to its advantage, especially due to their location.  Persistence and scaled value are things that this company can use social media for to improve customer satisfaction and increase the rate of repeat tenants.  Olivieri can seed and engage by using Central Michigan’s campus to market to new students and get the idea in their head that it is where they should live next semester.  The many companies and organizations in the Mount Pleasant area pose the threat and possible advantage of growth and collaboration for this industry.   

Prompt #2 The New Digital Age/You Are Not a Gadget

            The New Digital Age by Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen explores all types of Internet and technological developments both in the past, and now.  The introduction and Chapter 1 of The New Digital Age gives hints and predictions of what the future may hold.  Internet is the largest experiment involving anarchy in history.  The free expression and free movement of information that the web allows definitely helps us in everyday life, but could also be a threat to our everyday life.  This is why the Internet is such a hot topic and why these matters are taken so seriously.  There are age-old obstacles being conquered and a new wave of human creativity due to technological advances in the internet.
In The New Digital Age, Schmidt and Cohen talk about this being our future, and that’s what makes the industry exciting today.  Jaron Lanier somewhat agrees with the ideas of Schmidt and Cohen, but at the current points in both stories, it seems that Schmidt and Cohen are looking more toward the positive side of the future, while Lanier seems more concerned with the threats of technology and how much we depend on it.  For example, Lanier argues that new technology pulls us into life patterns that gradually degrade the ways in which each of us exists as an individual.  He is concerned that the increasing dependency on social media and the Internet Deemphasizes personhood and intrinsic value, while Schmidt and Cohen are on the positive and developmental side.  

Prompt #1 How an Organization Can Use Social Media

This industry relates to Chapter 1 of the Social Organization because technology and social media develop new ways of operation and can be a key element of collaboration to evaluate customer desires.  Advertising is also a positive aspect of social media in today’s culture and can be taken advantage of.  Since it is practically free to use social media, the possibilities for increasing media awareness is endless. 

                  The field that I am going into is Entrepreneurship and I chose to study the organization of property management.  I have some previous work-related experience in this area and the market is very intriguing to me.  This organization as well as almost every market today can use social media to improve internal business functions.  I believe that social media can be a great tool for businesses, but with every new technology or idea comes possible threats.  In the field of property management the competition is fierce and the market is always changing.  Social media can be used to combat the efforts of negative media posed against the property manager or association.  Since social media is so advanced and easy to access, owners of residential complexes or hotels have to be careful and watchful of what customers are sharing over the Internet.  Bad media toward a company causes them to incur a bad reputation and because the market is so large this can be detrimental to a company in this field.  For example, at apartmentratings.com users can access reviews and customer opinions about certain apartment and living complexes all over.