By: Bronwyn Williams

What’s trending now?

When everyone is an expert on everything…
The on-going social media revolution has changed the way we create and consume content.
Content creation used to be the domain of mainstream media.  Today everyone has a voice and a platform from which to speak… But who is listening?... And who is being heard?

The internet and the cell phone enable everyman to communicate his ideas to the same audience as The New York Times, Barak Obama - or even and Kim Kardashian - practically for free.

Why it’s important?
Amateurs are the new ‘experts’.
And these new ‘experts’ can be heard expressing their views everywhere:
- There are 156 million blogs on the web.
- There are over 200 million registered Twitter accounts.
- YouTube has 490 million unique users.
- Facebook has over 800 million active users.
- Even CNN has started broadcasting ‘user generated news’ through its iReport project…

When everyone has a personal website, a blog, a Twitter account, a YouTube channel and a Facebook profile from which to broadcast their own ideas, traditional, mainstream media becomes redundant – or does it?

The advent of the internet may give amateurs the same reach as the professionals, but it is questionable if they are ‘broadcasting’ the same quality of information as the real experts who have dedicated their lives to learning about a particular idea.
Just take a look at how an ignorant inflamed comment on a well-researched online news article is given the same credibility and exposure as the article itself…

This is the double-edged sword of the new communication economy: on the one hand, freedom of information means that everyone’s ideas can be heard; on the other hand a deluge of free ideas means the best ideas of our time are drowned in the information overload.And when everyone is busy talking, who is listening? And who is learning?
The risk is that the shared ideas of our society downgrade to the lowest common denominator – to the scare ‘wisdom’ off the crowds.

As Andrew Keen writes in his book, The Cult of the Amateur,“ what the Web 2.0 revolution is really delivering is superficial observations of the world around us rather than deep analysis, shrill opinion rather than considered judgment.” After all, Google, the god of the web, delivers us the most popular results on any topic, rather than the best quality results in a self-perpetuating cycle where the most popular get even more popular and the truly unique ideas get buried deeper and deeper in the search hierarchy, regardless of their true value.

And Wikipedia, on which every user is allowed to write absolutely anything they like, is now the fountain of all knowledge. But just because a few thousand people agree on something does not make it true...

What's the butterfly effect?

The challenge today is for the thought leaders of our time to stand up and be heard above the roar of the crowd. We cannot accept that the knowledge of our generation is left entirely up to the ‘wisdom’ of crowds. There is a need for credible curators of information, who will not simply take the ‘easy’ way out broadcast whatever low-quality ‘user generated content’ comes there way, but will rather sift through the masses of messages to reveal the golden nuggets and deeper thoughts buried within.

The pioneers and the global hotspots

Ted, ideas worth spreading conferences are already commonplace around the world; however the movement is still the go-to platform for the newest and greatest ideas of our time to be heard and spread. Individuals, brands and organisations alike should be challenged to step back and listen to these ideas, before adding to them; to think carefully before adding meaningless noise to the World Wide Web. When it comes to ideas, it is the quality not the quantity that counts…

As Seth Godin said in a recent blog post, “One option is to struggle to be heard... Another is to be the sort of person who is missed when you're not. The first involves making noise. The second involves making a difference.”

About Bronwyn
Bronwyn is an insatiably curious avid reader and an amateur physiologist who takes a keen and amused interest in observing the human condition.
She is constantly astounded at how predictable the world is once one is aware of the underling historical cycles shaping the trends driving our society forward.

“The State We're In" is an annual trend synopsis from Flux Trends that provides a comprehensive snapshot of trends that are changing the way we live, work and play. This popular, and eagerly awaited, trend presentation tracks the trajectory of five macro trends that affect all aspects of modern life: technology, global and local economic factors, the political landscape, environmental issues, retail & consumer mindset, and finally socio-cultural trends.

In an era of information overload, Flux Trends distills the key trends that you should be watching because we know that they will - sooner or later - have an impact on our lives and therefore the way in which we socialise or do business with each other.

This particular presentation, not only tracks trends coming onto the radar in the first quarter of 2012, but also looks more broadly at “the new world order” we now face. The recent global financial crisis has proven to an incredible catalyst of change, and we are seeing tried and tested  business templates dissolve or just prove to be outdated for the 21st century.

"The State We're In" will help you connect the dots, eliminate the spam, and enable you to navigate the turbulent journey ahead: a journey where the old rules are obsolete, but new rules have yet to be established. In short, a world in flux.

This presentation explores the following points:

- T: The latest trends in technology - the rise of smart TV and ‘size zero’ devices.
- R: How e-commerce blurs the boundaries between retail, advertising and publishing
- E: The state of global and local economies - the human impact rather than the numbers
- N: Is natural world redefining the 21st century concept of luxury?
- D: Politics and diplomacy: 20 countries will hold elections in 2012, what will the ripple effect of this be?
- S: Socio-cultural trends: what Angry Birds, civil disobedience and Kim Kardashian says about us.

Who should attend? Anyone who understands that the world no longer functions in silo’s, and that the ripple effect of one trend, now affects us all. Wisdom is knowledge refined. Flux distills it all for you, and then joins the dots. Aren’t you curious to discover what state we’re in?

BOOK NOW

When: Thursday, 9 February 2012
Where: Protea Hotel Fire & Ice! Melrose Arch
            22 Whitely Street, Melrose Arch Precinct
When: 4:30pm ( Registration opens at 4pm)
How much: R300

To attend this presentation in Johannesburg on the 9th February 2012, contact the Flux office on 011 7265528 or e-mail Tumi at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

To book this presentation for corporate events, e-mail Bethea on This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

A recommended read found on the Atlantic website.

Like photography before it, social media changes the way we perceive the world.

Emile Zola famously stated back in 1901, "In my view, you cannot claim to have really seen something until you have photographed it." Today, some make a similar joke: "it did not happen unless it is posted on Facebook."

For those who use Facebook, whose friends are on the site and logging in many times a day, we have come to experience the world differently. We are increasingly aware of how our lives will look as a Facebook photo, status update or check-in. As I type this in a coffee shop, I can "check-in" on Foursquare, I can "tweet" a funny one-liner overheard from the table next to me and I can take an 'interesting' photo of the perfectly-formed foam on top of my cappuccino. It is easy; I can do all of this and more from my phone in a matter of minutes. And, most importantly, there will be an audience for all of this. Hundreds of the people I am closest with will view all of this and some will reply with comments and "likes."

Simply, I have been trained to see the world in terms of what I can post to the Internet. I've learned to live and present a life that is "likeable."

Many have rightly criticized Facebook over how the site turns the unquantifiable beauty of human experience into something that fits into a database , or how Facebook misuses that database to earn fantastic profits. These are valid critiques; however, my concern is that the ultimate power of social media is how it burrows into us, our minds, our consciousness, changing how we consciously experience the world even when logged off.

Atlantic editor Alexis Madrigal wrote about how technology changes consciousness. For example, the invention of the railroad changed our perception of speed. He writes, "humans had to learn to look at the landscape, instead of trying to focus on the foreground." The photograph Zola spoke of did the same. Invented some 150 years ago, photography caused a global sensation around the new possibility: to document ourselves and our world in new ways, in greater detail and in lasting permanence.

Today, social media has also provided a new, more social way to document ourselves, lives and world. Never before was it possible to record and display to all of our friends a stream of photos, check-ins and status updates filled with our thoughts and opinions in such quantity and with such ease. The transformative power of social media surely is of similar magnitude and consequence as the invention of the photograph.

The photographer knows well that after taking many pictures one develops "the camera eye": vision becomes like the viewfinder, always perceiving the world through the logic of the camera mechanism via framing, lighting, depth of field, focus, movement and so on. Even without the camera in hand the world becomes transformed into the status of the potential-photograph.

Today, we are in danger of developing a "Facebook Eye": our brains always looking for moments where the ephemeral blur of lived experience might best be translated into a Facebook post; one that will draw the most comments and "likes."

Facebook fixates the present as always a future past. By this I mean that social media users have become always aware of the present as something we can post online that will be consumed by others. Are we becoming so concerned about posting our lives on Facebook that we forget to live our lives in the here-and-now? Think of a time when you took a trip holding a camera in your hand and then think of when you did the same without the camera. The experience is slightly different. We have a different attachment to our present when we are not concerned with documenting.

Today, social media means we are always traveling with the camera in our hands (metaphorically and often literally); we always can document. When going to see live music I notice more and more people distracted from the performance in order to take photos and videos to post to Facebook and YouTube. When the breakfast I made the other week looked especially delicious, I posted a photo of it before even taking a bite. The Facebook Eye in action.

Susan Sontag once wrote that "everything exists to end in a photograph" and today we might say that more and more of what we do exists to end up on Facebook. The tail of Facebook documentation has come to wag the dog of lived experience.

This essay was originally published in Italian for the newspaper Corriere della Sera. You can find it here . The essay is reprinted here in English with permission.