Flippin' 'eck

Andrew McAfee, associate professor at Harvard Business School and the man who coined the Enterprise 2.0 term, has been advocating a 'flip test' for assessing the likely impact of new technologies.

He got the idea from Professor Stanley Crouch. Presumably the same Stanley Crouch that writes columns for nydailynews.com and is occasionally controversial and is somewhat into jazz.

McAfee offers an example taken from a conference he was involved in. One of his fellow panellists said, "Let's say the world has only e-books, then someone introduces this technology called 'paper.'  It's cheap, portable, lasts essentially forever, and requires no batteries.  You can't write over it once it's been written on, but you buy more very cheaply.  Wouldn't that technology come to dominate the market?"

It's an interesting approach isn't it? Can the flip test be applied whenever assessing any new technology? Hey, never mind these OPACs, how about index cards? All you have to do is come into the library - lots of socialisation (as long as it's done quietly). Access to loads of books but, often, the one you want isn't there...

Now apply it to blogging, news readers, wikis, Twitters, Facebook and so on. If a later one in that list existed, would an earlier one have made a mark?

Facebook is a strange hybrid. It largely ignores some existing technologies like RSS, yet it seems to be gaining popularity. (Like hundreds of thousands of new users per day.) It offers public places to hang out with like-minded individuals, while providing private spaces and the ability to exchange private messages as well. A kind of one-stop shop for most social things we do online.

It also offers a way to spill large chunks of your identity onto the web or into the possession of the organisation which run this essentially private domain.

Peer pressure is intense. I steadfastly refuse to 'be friends' with people I don't actually know (or like), despite the guilt that goes with hurting their feelings. Of course, I'm probably not hurting them at all, because they are just handing over their entire address books to the service and giving it permission to send out these obligation-laden 'be my friend' emails.

Perhaps we all need to take stock of where these new technologies are leading us. And the 'flip test' offered by professors Crouch and McAfee strikes me as one darned useful tool for our armouries.

Hat tip to Paul Miller for sparking off this train of thought.