Asher Idan is the Manager of Future Studies of Social Media, in The Department of Management in Tel Aviv University. Lecturer about Web 2.0 in Bar Ilan University. Consultant to top Israeli boards and R&D: Intel, SAP, Comverse, Cellcom, Orange, Superpharm, Tnuva
Almost every day he is speaking at different conferences, universites and assemblies about Medicine, Business Management, Politics, Private Innovations and Education.
We are very grateful that he took his precious time to answer a few of our questions.
Hello Mr. Idan, first of all I think it would be very interesting for our readers if you could briefly summarize what issues you are dealing with as “Manager of Future Studies of Social Media”, in The Department of Management in Tel Aviv University. That sounds like a very exciting job and – as far as I am concerned, not many universities offers “Future Studies of Social Media”, or at least – not yet.
Future Studies of social media watch the future trends of the social media (SM): If Web 2.0 is social media, than what is Web 3.0 ? Web 3.0 is the Semantic Web or the Intelligent Web that Tim Berners Lee, envision in the Year 2000 in a paper in Scientific American. What is Web 4.0? The Nano-Bio Web.
Social Media is undoubtedly having a very big impact on the way human beings relate to each other. What would you rate as two or three most defining characteristics of change? Do you see any trends towards the future?
The three most defining characteristics of change are: A, the transformation from Mass and Monologic Communication to Conversational Dialogic Communication. B, From Mass Representational Democracy to Direct Communal Democracy. C, From One-to-Many Education to Many to Many Education.
Since the burst of the dot-com bubble at the end of the 90ies, people are looking at online commerce differently and have become much more sceptical and cautious. On the other hand we are seeing more and more emerging online businesses. How do you think online business is going to develop? Are we going to see more and more people “working online” or will it stay something that is only for highly trained professionals like web-developers, designers, coaches etc.?
In 2015 there will be 2 Billion people on the Internet. Most of them will be Y Generation (age 5-35) and/or from Chidia (China+India). Most of them can work from everywhere.
Now I have a question, that I am personally very interested in, since I am teaching languages online and have been teaching young adults for many years before in a local school. I am very curious as to the development of “traditional schooling”. The whole concept of children sitting in a classroom, not being able to move much, required to be quiet for hours and hours and only express themselves when being asked seems very old-fashioned, to put it mildly. What do you think about the future of education? I know, this is a big question, but to ask more directly: Will “school” as we know it disappear? Will it be replaced by something else, and if yes, by what? Or will our children continue to sit in classrooms like they have been one hundred years ago?
The answers to the following questions depends on our actions: Will “school” as we know it disappear? Will it be replaced by something else, and if yes, by what? Or will our children continue to sit in classrooms like they have been one hundred years ago? The Social Media enable us to move from Monologic Teaching to Dialogic Learning
My last question is a very simple one. A lot of people are using Social Media these days. People even speak of “social media addiction”. What would you say, is a healthy balance between and online and an “offline” life?
There is no one formula for a healthy balance between an online and an “offline” life. Everything should be balanced according to individual criteria.
Thank you very much for the interview. I am sure this will give our readers a lot to think about and to research for themselves.
