Seth Godin had a great post yesterday on The soapbox and the city. He says the following (Parts of his longer post))
If you want to find creative work, go to a city. If you want to find inspiration, expose yourself to diversity, not a bubble. The city is chaotic, without much of a filter.
The soapbox, on the other hand, is the amplified voice of a single speaker. The soapbox is the newspaper with subscribers, the Twitter account with followers, the blog with readers.
For the first time in the history of media, those that are able to consume the media are also able to create it. That’s a powerful (and thus frightening) choice. One day soon, it’s possible that corporate interests will impose barriers on soapbox access, all in an effort to reclaim power for themselves. Until then, the race is on to build your tribe, to tirelessly connect and to earn an audience that wants to hear from you.
While Seth hits the nail on the head, I thought I would add my two cents as to why this is the case.
Two thousand years ago, people connected over the ‘what’ i.e. friendship and relationships were among equals of role. Kings with Kings, farmers with farmers, traders with traders. What you do defined who you were and the circles you hung out in. In ancient India, as an example, these divisions even gave rise to the now famous caste system. This connection was restricted to people in your area as very few travelled across distances
Gradually , society and communication evolved to enable us to connect on the ‘how’ we did things. Success meant less barriers around distance, and all the way till the 1980s, these barriers kept breaking and we had connections across lands. If you were an amazing scientist, you could increasingly cooperate with men of Science across lands. The ‘what’ was still relevant but the ‘how’ was more significant.
Over the past 2 decades, we have rapidly moved into the era of ‘why’. The readers and commenters of this blog are a fantastic example. One look at the top commenters reveals people across ages and backgrounds who are connected with the same ‘why’ – in this case, a belief in the fact that we get better everyday, that we learn from every circumstance we face. We are united in the ‘why’.
That’s why the concept of the soapbox is immensely powerful and if we want to make use of it, we need to share our ‘why’, our beliefs because, for the first time in many millenia, we are able to connect with truly like minded people with similar belief systems from all over the world.
It’s like magic. And it’s not to be underestimated.
A Learning a Day 