The Future of Social Media – The Possibilities are…Endless.

I am 53 years old. I don’t want to bore you with the technological changes I have seen in this lifetime, it sort of rambles from watching a black & white image of a man walking on the moon to holding a smartphone in my hand to text a friend. Jinkys…that is a lot of progress in a short time. Technology only got faster, in 2004 who had heard of Facebook but wow, here we sit a mere near 10 years later and who hasn’t heard of Facebook. Welcome to the brilliant playground.

Where will we be in another 10 years? I will be preparing to retire, hopefully. I hope by then social media marketing will have finally decided that my age dynamic matters. Sucks that we who started all this in the first place are ignored for the most part by online marketers.

I am excited at what might happen to social media in 10 years. I think it is going to be amazing. We are on the cusp of some exciting innovations with the upcoming semantic web. Oh sure, it will initially take some very professional and super smarty intelligent people to construct the logistics and the data filters for the ontology but from there…it can simply soar in the application developments of average people just diddling about. 

Right now you can ask a browser to search for a lowest airflight price from A to B.  Your browser will return anything/everything with that keysearch word BUT wouldn’t it be handy to have your browser able to interpret pricing data, deduce your initial query and return in fact, the lowest prices for a specific flight you intend to take from point A to point B? It is around the corner.

2021 A Semantic Odyssey

To create a new Facebook is a moot point. Why build something already invented? Repetition will not save social media and quite frankly, do we as users, really want the same old? No, no. The future of social media lies in what is innovative and stretches the limits. That is the spark and ignition. There is a reason that Facebook is constantly changing, it is in a race to keep you and I engaged because one day… soon…the semantic capabilities of the web are going to send us spiraling and Facebook could be left far behind. New trends, new ease of use has made emerging platforms popular and profitable in amazing short periods of time. Pinterest is nothing more really then simply pinning and re-pinning but…we love it. Somehow by what we pin we are telling a story about ourselves, our lives our interests, our passions. That is what I think when I see someone’s Pinterest page. It is somehow like pictures in a book of who a person is and it doesn’t divulge as much personal information in a society that is slowly, ever slowly learning to try to be a bit more cautious. 

We are as a people already consuming and sharing at an amazing rate. Blogs, tweets, images, videos. It is outstanding. Online purchasing is steadily climbing. Even Chapters, who once buried small book sellers like W.H. Smith and Coles is struggling to keep its head above the waters of Amazon and the new e-book and audio book generation. It will only get worse for some and get better for others. I don’t even want to ponder what will become of all the people who work in retail employment for a living…when the stores become obsolete and transcend into digital media and online shopping. 

I don’t know what we will become when we are adept at communicating on social media platforms…but have lost the art of reading body language and faces and interactive interpretation that only comes from engaging face to face, not face to screen. We may teach a machine to respond to our human emotions but that hardly teaches us how to engage with another human ourselves. When we can online communicate with thousands, then when or even why would the few matter.  We can sit in a restaurant or a coffee shop and never be alone because the world is always with us, in the palm of our hand.

Social media marketers are going to be intent on getting those thousands won over. All they have to do is engage with that audience.  When they engage with that audience, they get the sales, they get the profits. The only way Amazon will fail is when a competitor offers something more to engage to us.  As consumers, we are less sophisticated. At college we recently had an assignment to audit companies and you know what shocked me most? Is that companies that had snazzy and engaging websites and used social media to promote that somehow wearing that pair of jeans, or eating that cereal or drinking that coffee was…cool, that we embraced the image. Or rather a reflection of us being cool because we embraced that cool company.  Consumers jumping at the opportunity of improving their image by becoming sheep to the flock of trend. Meanwhile a newspaper reports that the said jean company obtained their distressed acid trendy-look by literally making desperate for work humans literally sick. Isn’t that a sad conundrum?  We made a company rich to look cool while it took advantage of the poor and contributed to their deaths so the we could look cool in the rich companies products.  Such an evil circle but wow, their social media presence is just so awesome. Our social media use has never been higher, and so are teenage suicides resulting from cyber bullying carried out for the most part by social media means. Who are we? What are we going to become?

I hope that we will change in the next 10 years.  We keep hearing that social media is dumbing us down. That if blogs give way to short tweets and texts then we lose our grammar, our spelling, our ability to constructive individual thought. I hope that even as technology marches forward that we will find ourselves again as humans who can be globally responsible and as ethically and morally progressive as our technology’s speed is. That it won’t just be about being able to tell our cell phone to wake us up and brew our favourite cup of K-cup coffee while auto-starting the car on a cold winter morning but somehow about something more. Not just about me, or not just about you but somehow it becomes more about all of us and bettering the world for everyone. Recently I was hearing how car insurance companies want to push these little black boxes to collect driver information, so you would know if your kid was speeding in your car or in business if your fleet car is being driven only for business and responsibly…because it seems that more and more we are becoming less authentic. We are about status at whatever cost, not about honour, responsibility, honesty, trust. I want that back. I want us to be able to believe in each other, trust each other and not just technology.

But technology science doesn’t move that way.  It has no heart or soul, just infinite possibilities.

Seriously, it will be amazing to see what we will be able to do, what we will be able to accomplish, it really will. It is almost overwhelming. But I keep thinking of Arthur C. Clarke. He always tried to underline every book of science fiction he wrote with one basic theme, if we, the human race, advance too fast and technologically progress at an alarming rate that we can’t morally and ethically keep up before we simply begin to put it to use, what becomes of us? 

It might be nice to have your child chipped so that when they get to school you get a tweet telling you your child just safely arrived, or that they just got on the bus for the ride home, that they just got into the house, that they are watching TV at the moment of a show you programed as being acceptable. Safe. You can itemize their day, their moves and know they are okay. But they have no freedom that is not surveyed, they have no trust to earn or judgment for better or worse to develop, they have no time that is their own. Big Brother isn’t your brother; it could be your mother!

Or how about you step off the plane in the Dominican Republic and you suddenly get a tweet that reads “Congratulations. We just noticed that you have worn your Fruit of the Loom underwear, that you purchased from WalMart on June 21^st, 2018, Lot 8888, to the Dominican Republic. We think that is awesome. Yours Sincerely, Fruit of the Loom International. PS Please feel free to re-tweet this to all your friends. By clicking on the link below you will be provided with all the locations that you can shop and enjoy Fruit of the Loom undergarments while in the Dominican Republic. Have a wonderful holiday”  

Seriously? Curse those Radio Frequency Identification tags. But my children, the capability will be there, is there and so much more.

For one day not long after the Dominican holiday you check into your mobile media on a break and surprise, this message greets you “Good morning, we are hoping you are having a nice day at work. We started your laundry this morning at your preset determination of 10:30 a.m. and regret to inform you we experienced a malfunction and your Fruit of the Loom underwear that you bought at WalMart on June 21^st, 2018, Lot 8888 was damaged and is non-recoverable. We know this because we can no longer detect its RFID tag. We know that this is most regrettable to you since we have been able to determine by the number of times our data shows you wearing this particular pair on a weekly basis that this was at a probability factor of 96.7% your favourite pair. We are very sorry for your loss. We have been able to determine that there is an identical lot number pair of underwear currently for sale in a Target Store in Alleghany New York. We have determined that the ratio of this pair being just as comfortable is 98:100. Would you like us to call that store and purchase this item for you using your stored financial data? We have surveyed your bank account and upcoming financial expenses and factored in your next pay period and determined that you can afford this purchase.  Please respond Yes or No for us to purchase this replacement for you or we could search for a comparable pair at a lower cost. We are waiting for your response or you could allow us to predetermine calculate your likeliest response and act accordingly. Have a nice day.  Your  iLife“

Hmm, I am just not sure about all this future stuff…

(I just wish we paid more attention to provider services. They are expensive and roaming fees…seriously, don’t get me started. I want it to be free, like some European countries and I want it to be international like the Space Station…and free. Yeah, that is what I want more than a computer that can identify me by my thumbprint or my retina. Hello?)

Reference

I PhotoShopped an image from "2001 A Space Odyssey" Screenplay by Stanley Kubrick, and Arthur C. Clarke. Dir. Stanley Kubrick. Warner Bros. Pictures, 1968. Motion Picture to bend it to my evil purpose.  

Creative Activism in the Face of Change – Crowdfunding and the Cure for Cancer

I understand Malcolm Gladwell author of “Small Change: Why the Revolution will not be tweeting" premise that with the increase of social media we are no longer as effective in our ability to enact social change through revolution and activism.

I just don’t completely agree with him. 

And I will tell you why. 

Joseph McNeil, Franklin McCain, 

William Smith, and Clarence Henderson

 holding a sit-in at a Woolworth’s

 lunch counter in Greensboro, North 

Carolina, February 2, 1960. Credit: © UPI/Bettmann/Corbis

I do agree that social media has led us to a form of “lazy” activism. The courage that it took for four young black men to sit at a designated white’s only snack bar is amazing. Think about it, how afraid would you have been in that time, a racial minority sitting in the wrong seats simply because it was the right thing to do against a majority of opposite thinking people.

"Tank Man" iconic image of democracy

 temporarily stops the advance of

 a column of tanks on June 5, 1989, on Chang’in Avenue,

 Beijing, was taken by Jeff Widener of the

 Associated Press, from a sixth floor balcony of

 the Beijing Hotel

Then there is the image of a Tiananmen Square student, standing in front of a line of tanks (TANKS!) in 1989.  His solitary hope in the face of all that mech assault capability was that civility would triumph. It isn’t what he did. It is what he had the courage to do for a peaceful resolution. His courage could not be tweeted but, thanks to social media we could collectively bear witness to his stand. That one lonely figure, bearing no arms.

History is filled with physical demonstrations and controversy of opinion. Some, not all, has brought about positive social change, whether it was driven by social or political motivations.

The Boston Tea Party, the right of women to vote, the equal rights movement for African-Americans, the musical revolution of rock n’roll. Pick your cause, pick your fight. 

So, if current social media activism doesn’t have that element of physical death or threat of potentially terminal harm, is it any less valuable? One word. No. 

And I will tell you why; the iCancer Campaign. I am a carcinoid NETS survivor. NETS stands for neuroendocrine cancer.  The BIG, scary ‘C’.

What is it? Remember Steve Jobs, the beloved inventor of the toys you love to worship under the white Apple? Mac, iPod, iPhone, iPad. Steve Jobs was their founding father. He died of NETs — cancers of glands in the body that release hormones under the control of the nervous system. NETs is difficult to treat because patients typically only present symptoms after the cancer has reached a relatively late stage and started to spread to other parts of the body.  Steve Jobs had pancreatic NETs. I had Carcinoid. That is your brief introduction and now I will explain further how a group stood scientific fundraising on its ear by invoking the power of social media “We”. 

Enter Swedish Professor Magnus Essand, Dr. Justyna Leja and their research group at Uppsala University, Sweden. They re-engineered an adenovirus (often responsible for a cold) into a weapon of mass destruction against NETs cancerous cells. The adenovirus infection ruptures the tumor cells, the contents released from the dead cells then stimulate the immune system to attach to other tumor cells and destroy them too.

Professor Magnus Essand (r) and Dr. Justyn Leja (l)

I hope you are still with me. This is the edge of a cure for a terminal cancer.

The modified virus worked in mice but laid dormant in a laboratory freezer because there were no funds to begin the human clinical trials. Sweden supports basic research but falls short on the more expensive clinical human studies. There were also patent problems, Essand didn’t patent in his commitment to publishing in medical journals. Essand and Leja were approximately 3 million euro short to begin initial clinical studies in humans. 

That is what is happening on your left hand. 

On your right hand are two friends, Alexander Masters and Dido Davies in the United Kingdom.  Alexander is an author, screenwriter and illustrator. Dido is a biographer, co-writer and best friend to Alexander. Dido informs her friend Alexander that she has been diagnosed with pancreatic NETs. The exact same cancer that killed Steve Jobs. Alexander and Dido do exactly what you might do and what I did do...they googled. Alexander finds Professor Magnus Essand and is surprised what the Professor has stashed in his freezer and mind boggled that problems over patenting and funding had a possible cure for a terminal cancer stalled. Alexander was particularly stymied that the required funding didn’t seem so impossible an amount when weighed against human lives.  

Left hand Prof. Essand and Dr. Leja, right hand Alexander Masters and his best friend Dido Davies.

Left Hand
+
Right Hand

Left hand meets right hand: Alexander met with Essand and Leja in Sweden. Upon his return to England he did what he does best, he wrote an article in The Daily Telegraph about it all and his personal outrage that the research was stalled by a lack of funds.  His article caught the attention of a clinical oncologist and bio therapist by the name of Richard Melcher who partnered up with Professor Kevin Harrington, a consultant oncologist.  Together they contacted Prof. Essand and reviewed his work, lending their professional opinion that Essand and Leja had something rather exciting in those petri-dishes in the freezer.

Enter Dominic Nutt, a fellow British journalist who has NETs and Liz Scarff, a social media expert who donated her time to co-ordinate the campaign plus crowdfund experts Indiegogo and a website was born called iCancer Campaign. A snowball effect of people who felt that science could and should be helped. The word got out and the campaign mushroomed taking on other people willing to help, including yet another NET patient, Catherine Cooling Davis, who helped spread awareness and raise funds in the United States. Just people, funding science advancement by sheer choice and generosity.

The rallying cry of iCancer is "People before profit. Let's crowdfund the anti-cancer virus that could save thousands".
 

At the end of the Indiegogo campaign period of February 14, 2013 iCancer had raised $161,942 through the Indiegogo’s site and another $190,000 donated directly to Uppsala University. My last notification from The Carcinoid Cancer Foundation was on June 19, 2013 and it included the information that the Tethys Oil AB Board Chairman and founder, Vincent Hamilton had donated approximately $2 million to the campaign. 

Phase 1 clinical studies can now begin. All hope is that it is the beginning of a cure. The next projects the iCancer Campaign is considering to help fund are clinical studies for lung cancer and brain tumors in children, both forms of neuroendocrine cancer. 

All because one man had a friend diagnosed with NETs and was dissatisfied with the bureaucracy of drug patenting and testing and decided that he, with the help of we, was going to do something about that. Armchair activism that could save my life, or yours, or the life of someone we hold dear.

I hope you have the opportunity to check out the resources below for further reading on the remarkable iCancer Campaign. 

Dido Davies passed away June 15, 2013 from NETs.  Dr. Justyna Leja is now Professor Justyna Leja

Resources & Further Reading

”iCancer Campaign” website, http://icancer.org.uk/

A Possible Cure for Neuroendocrine Cancer: Exciting Update! (June 19, 2013) The Carcinoid Cancer Foundation. Retrieved from  http://carcinoid.wordpress.com/2013/06/19/a-possible-cure-for-neuroendocrine-cancer-exciting-update/

Cooling Davis, C. (June 25, 2013), Let’s Cure Neuroendocrine Cancer. Retrieved from http://netcure.weebly.com/

Master, Alexander (undated). An iCure? Crowdfunding might catapult promising cancer treatments into clinical trials, but can it make a real difference? Aeon. Retrieved from http://www.aeonmagazine.com/living-together/alexander-masters-crowdfunding-cancer-treatments/

Nutt, D. (September 14, 2012). Would I take an untested cancer treatment myself? Hell, yes! The Telegraph. Retrieved from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/9544400/Would-I-takean-untested-cancer-treatment-myself-Hellyes.html

Photo Credits

Picture of the Birmingham Four courtesy of http://www.britannica.com/blogs/2013/02/blac-history-spotlight-civil-rights-movement/

Picture of Tiananmen Square courtesy of Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiananmen_Square_protests_of_1989 Photographer Jeff Widener. (The Associated Press)  June 5, 1989.

Picture of Professor Magnus Essand and Dr. Justyna Leja courtesy of iCancer Campaign, http://icancer.org.uk/