Book review: Monkeys with typewriters

February 21st, 2010

A year or so ago, I get a call from a lady called Jemima Gibbons who wanted to meet me to discuss how one went about writing a book – so we meet up in my favourite haunt at RIBA and had a chat about what Jemima saw as a significant challenge.

Her book Monkeys with Typewriters: myths and realities of social media at work published by Triarchy Press, is a great success.

Its a great success, because, and I am not the first to say so, Jemima’s approach to her writing is very elegant. And also, Jemima is not in your face in an evangelical sort of way. That said there is more substance here, than a flourish of the digital quill. Jemima points us to the challenge of doing business, the nature of organisations, and a different way of marketing in a networked society.

So if you want an easy to read, enjoyable guide to understanding the world described as social media – then Jemima’s book is the one for you. Dave Cushman has also written a review of Monkeys with Typewriters. Going back and flicking through the copy Jemima gave to me its, as quite often with books I read that interest me, underlined, and comments written all over it. This book gently states, though it is the most powerful meme in our world today, that social media is not about technology it is about people. As Carl Jung wrote,

I needs we to truly be I

As Jamais Cascio told me, communications technology can be wielded as a powerful agent of change. The authenticity of the book is also that Jemima has spoken to a great many people in business and academia, and those interviews bring as closer to the interface of understanding the significance of doing business in a world where as Doc Searls wrote, markets are conversations, and where we argued in 2004 that Communities Dominate Brands, and that we saw the rise of the networked community generation, always on and always connected. We also saw that at the epicentre of what made business thrive whether that was online or off, was the ability to engage people within a social context – the complete 180 to an industrial approach to not just business, but also, how we work, how we want to lead out lives and how we educate our children. That insight is now unfolding before us, as it touches our daily lives. We are mid-wives to a new way of doing things.

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