Marshall McLuhan’s view on the “social media expert”

I was just asked “what is a social media expert”?

Marshall McLuhan is still the oracle. Here is one of my favorite quotes from the master.

“Professionalism merges the individual into patterns of total environment. Amateurism seeks the development of the total awareness of the individual and the critical awareness of the groundrules of society. The amateur can afford to lose. The professional tends to classify and specialise, to accept uncritically the groundrules of the environment. The groundrules provided by the mass response of his colleagues serve as a pervasive environment of which he is contentedly unaware. The ‘expert’ is the man who stays put.”

- Marshall McLuhan

In other words, a “social media expert” is an oxymoron – it cannot exist. The true trailblazers who forge new paths for the rest are the amateurs, the ones who are continually trying new things because they do NOT know. Anyone who truly understands social media would never pretend otherwise.

I wrote down this quote a dozen years ago because it so accurately reflected the way I felt about ‘professionals’ and ‘amateurs’. Amidst today’s extraordinary pace of change this outlook is in fact far more relevant than it ever has been before.

Celebrate the amateur!

http://barrysaunders.com Barry

That is true if you restrict the ‘social media expert’ term to practitioners. One can become an expert in understanding social media – new media studies, social media studies and the like – without it being tautological.
In any case, McLuhan’s description of experts as uncritically accepting the rules of the environment only works as an absolute if you called Picasso and Dali amateur painters – which they patently were not. There aren’t one set of values and practices for experts and another for amateurs, but a range of values, practices and acceptances.
McLuhan’s a great polemicist, not a particularly great analyst.
http://barrysaunders.com Barry

sorry, not tautological. oxymoronic.
http://www.groupemutuelle.com mutuelle

mc luchans is a specialist no
http://ianbruce.blogspot.com/2009/09/what-if-marshall-mcluhan-was-alive-and.html Ian Bruce

Hard to know what McLuhan would have made of social media (arguably a tautology itself). He’d have recognized the indetity crisis it creates, and the flatness and what he would have called the “deep cold” of the medium. The guy was out there a lot of the time…
RL COMM I Social Media Expert

You need to have many skills in social mediato be

socially successful in real life. You need to establish a respect and

presence before you will earn respect, authority, and the ability to

succeed
Ruben

Social media (or collaborative technology, as some now prefer in the enterprise world) is deeply woven into the fabric of both my work and personal life. On the IT journalism side, I use social media to find sources, provide live coverage of events, gauge sentiment, distribute content, track news and fact-check stories. When I’m not focused on work, I use social media to stay in touch with friends, family, former colleagues and classmates, find out what’s happening around whatever city I’m in or check on the status of events or government services. I try to use the various platform to get smarter.