The organizers of Social Media Week has announced the global theme for 2016. In a message sent to Innovation Village this afternoon, organizers said the theme for next year is:
“The Invisible Hand: Hidden Forces of Technology (and How We Can Harness it for Good)”
Toby Daniels is the Founder and Executive Director of Social Media Week, and he that said next year’s Social Media Week events across the world will explore how mobile technology, networked connectivity, data and machine learning, and other technologies are the attributes of a new paradigm changing everything in our lives.
The team said in a blog post:
“Here at Social Media Week, we have an obligation to help you understand technology’s role in our future, what it means for your business, and for our globally connected society.
“Through engaging, entertaining, educational and diverse content and conversations, we will once again explore how technology, social media and mobile devices helps us work smarter and live more productive lives.”
The Invisible Hand: Hidden Forces of Technology (and How We Can Harness it for Good) will serve as our unifying theme throughout 2016 and will be unpacked and explored across our 18 SMW cities.
Our examination will look at four attributes of “The Invisible Hand”:
- Mobile technology: Devices such as mobile phones, and networks including Bluetooth, NFC, WiFi, 4G, etc., that can operate to some extent interactively and autonomously
- Networked connectivity: The means by which these devices and networks are able to connect to each other through routers, switches and gateways
- Data: Including the capture, analysis, curation, search, sharing, storage, transfer, and visualization of information
- Machine learning: The study and the construction of algorithms that can learn from and make predictions on data
When combined these attributes change everything. Whether it’s the way we consume media, engage with brands, access healthcare, vote, travel, choose restaurants, commute to work, collaborate on projects, or how we go about choosing a date, technology’s invisible hand plays a crucial role in decision-making, or the way n which we experience the world around us.
“The Invisible Hand” represents the intangible, under-valued processes driving our technology, and ultimately, our decisions, forward. As we become more efficient, dynamic, and diverse human-beings, we have the responsibility to understand the present and future potential of these hidden forces all around us.
The Origins of “The Invisible Hand”
In the 18th century, Adam Smith came up with “The Invisible Hand,” a metaphor that describes “unintended social benefits resulting from individual actions.”
This phrase relates to the idea that society may benefit more from one individual’s pursuit of passion or interest than if that individual set out to impact his or her entire community or culture from the start. In a networked society we can look at “The Invisible Hand” metaphor in a slightly different way. Today, our individual actions cannot be isolated in regards to how we use technology.
When you request an Uber ride, recommend a book on Amazon, share a BuzzFeed article, watch a movie on Netflix, or ask Siri for directions, your actions are part of a collective set of actions that contribute to new outcomes. These new outcomes do not just impact you. They also help improve the products, services, and technologies around us, as well as overall life of everyone connected online to each other.
Two Sides of “The Invisible Hand” Conversation
However these outcomes are not always positive, and so if we are to remain vigilant as technology progresses, then we need to facilitate a dialogue that explores the various sides and perspectives of this ever-changing movement.
There are two sides to the Invisible Hand however, positive outcomes and negative drawbacks, both of which must be explored. As technology takes over more of our decision making there are moral and ethical implications to consider and we feel strongly that as a global community we are well positioned to host an open and constructive dialogue that looks at both sides.
Some real-life examples you might know, include:
| Individual Action | Collective Benefit | Collective Drawbacks |
|---|---|---|
| Ordering an Uber | Faster response times | Lack of job stability when everyone’s a contractor |
| Rating a restaurant on Yelp | Better recommendations | Easily manipulated reviews |
| Pinning a picture on Pinterest | Better product recommendations | Working for free for retailers that get all the benefit |
| Watching a film on Netflix | Better discovery of new things to watch based on popularity | Fewer people have these shared experiences talking around the water-cooler |
| Endorsing a skill on LinkedIn | Adding more objectivity and context to professionals resumes everywhere | Gaming experience to get ahead |
| Sharing a Buzzfeed article on Facebook | Allows for surfacing of more relevant and timely content | Publishers seeking lowest common denominator of shareability rather than great reporting |
| Swiping left on Tinder | Narrows the number of potential dates you’re presented with. | Swiping right leads to greater casual sex, unwanted pregnancies, objectification of women, and more |
| Sharing location of traffic police on Waze | Prevents others from being caught for speeding and other traffic offences. | Encourages speeding and other forms of dangerous driving. |
