Plato and Social Media in the Workplace

Several months ago my bosses called a staff meeting at work to talk about how to use a new marketing tool we were to being using at work: Facebook. Now I, and the rest of our 20-something staff, had been secretly (and sometimes not so secretly) been using it for years, much longer than either of our superiors, but we still needed to be taught the "correct" way to use it in the work environment. Since then, I have seen several articles on teaching people the correct way to use a Facebook and other social media in a corporate environment. Simple rules like, staying organized by separating your work life from your personal life online, always assuming that everything is “on the record,” and knowing your facts and citing your resources (A Corporate Guide to Social Media) are great policies and not only improve the use of social media, they keep employees from getting fired.

My coworkers and I thought being taught how to use Facebook was silly at first, but we came to realize that we can still learn a better way to do something we already know. Even in Plato's day, Statesmen and other educated men who had been writing speeches for years had much to learn. In Plato’s Phaedrus, after reading a clunky, unorganized speech by Lysias, the Orator, Socrates determines that, “every discourse ought to be a living creature, having a body of its own and a head and feet; there should be a middle, beginning, and end (436),” in order to make better sense. In addition to making sure thoughts flow in a logical way, he also stresses that “a speech should also end in a recapulation,“ meaning that “there should be a summing up of the arguments in order to remind the hearers of them (441).“ These ideas seem obvious and mundane to literate people in the 21st Century, but someone had to sit down and analyze the organization of basic rhetoric and come up with rules for its best use. Whether or not Socrates’ rules were ever applied to improve Lysias‘ work, they are used in and improve all forms of rhetoric today.

Plato, as a media critic, was not only concerned with the flow of writing, but also in the perfection, clarity, and appropriateness of the writing to each audience. To him it was not only important to say the right things, but to know all the right ways to say them at what times. Socrates tells Phaedrus that when, “he knows the times and seasons of all these things, then, and not until then, he [an orator] is a perfect master of his art; but if he fail in any of these points, whether in speaking or teaching or writing them, and yet declares that he speaks by rules of art, he who says ‘I don’t believe you’ has the better of him (448).” In the same way, if we do or say something inappropriate on a social media website, we can be just as easily discredited in everything we do. This is why it is important to be able to refer to your sources on social media sites with hyperlinks, etc. and to always remember that everything is on the record. As this startling NPR story about Google's Deal with Publishers points out, even if you delete a scandalous or just inappropriate comment or a blog post, there is a chance that it has been saved as a screen capture or printed out already, and there is little you can do about it. If you are using social media at work as a representative of your company or even just your professional self, this is something to keep in mind.

One of the reasons for Socrates’ concern about perfection in writing was its permanence. He was concerned that people gave too much implied intelligence to the written words of speeches, “but if you want to know anything and put a question to one of them, the speaker always gives one unvarying answer (453).” In this area, we find some exception in social media. It is inherently interactive, and if someone has a question about a blog post or a tweet, all they have to do is reply or comment, and they will probably get an answer; maybe not just from the original author, but from others following the author. The many wiki sites are a popular example of this phenomenon. You can send a question out into the void breakfast and get hundreds of answers back by lunch time. Although the words are not yet sentient themselves, you are more likely to get an answer from them than you were in Plato’s day.

As has been the trend, any new media is scary at first to the general public, especially to intellectuals who are worried about innovations making people lazy and stupid. Even Plato feared that the letters of the written word would become a crutch and those who used them would know “only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; the will appear omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom with out the reality (452).” People are saying the exact same things of the generations coming up knowing and using digital media. It is not the end of knowledge, but just the transference of knowledge to a new medium. It means a change in the way we communicate at work as well as at home. We should not be afraid of these tools, but learn how to use them, and use them properly.

Don't let the evolution scare you. It’s not business as usual. And that’s OK.

My First Blog

This will be the blog I use for my first semester in Grad School studying Emerging Media and Communications at UT Dallas. I will blog about readings for the class and will hopefully find my "blog voice" along the way. Stay tuned for more!