The S Word: Not ‘Social’, But ‘Sophistry’

[via Andrew McAfee The S Word]

the point I was trying to make in my talk, and the one I still believe, is that keying the message / sales pitch / marketing / education effort around the word ’social’ is a bad idea.

[via Euan Semple The S Word]

My response “You are right - pitching into the enterprise world using the word social is not going to work. But what is going on is inherently social and who’s pitching? Aren’t we just helping them understand what is going to happen to them eventually anyway - whatever we call it.”

I disagree with McAfee and others who have said we should avoid the S word or similar things (notably Dennis Howlett, see The Sum Of All Fears: The Social Business Naysayers). The premise is that the stern and serious senior executives of large businesses will wave off the ‘social business’ term, holding their noses the whole time.

Euan is dead on: if it is social revolution, we’d better say so. Instead of being obsessed with misconceptions about the term ‘social’, we should help shape the discussion about it. That’s the motivation behind the Social Business Epicenter conference that I am organizing (April 20, 2010, New York City).

I think McAfee, Howlett, and others of that group have abdicated their responsibilities by saying what is happening on the web today, and its impact on business, media, and society as being based on something other than the social aspects of new tools and technologies. It’s just wrong. It may make some subset of corporate execs less afraid of the future — momentarily — but it’s simply incorrect.

And avoiding the word because it makes people skittish, while you know that it is the core of what is happening, is sophristry: it is an argument based on broken logic, intended to obscure the truth.

[Update 2:41pm 14 Dec 2009: I commented on Andy’s blog post, directly, here.]