While running errands this morning I saw a sign outside a restaurant that said, “Now. Chipotle!” This sign sums up the fundamental problem behind the raging debate on Techmeme over whether “Social Graph” is any better or different from “Social Network.” The criticism ranges from they both mean the same thing, to it’s just more Web 2,0 marketing and VC hype. Other critics have noted that this concept has been around for years, and anyone who didn’t know that is a “doofus.” All of these complaints betray an underlying distaste for marketing scum who spend their time finding new terms to use in tricking people who know less than serious techies. It also reveals a fundamental belief among all scientists that new ideas are “out there” waiting to be discovered, and once they are invented in the form of some device or software, naming is just an after thought. It is the “original inventor” who deserves all the credit.
The problem is that the world doesn’t work that way. Let’s look at the current food trend behind Chipotle. Wikipedia explains that this spice has been used in Latin America for hundreds of years, and is made from smoked chile pepper, most commonly jalapeño. So the name is just a marketing trick to introduce it now to less knowledgable Americans, right? It’s not that easy. You have to factor in the growing Hispanic population, and the increased use of condiments like salsa, and the growing shift from a bland American palate to a greater tolerance of spicy food. This may even involve the increased popularity of other spicy cuisines, like Indian and Thai. Do you think that some marketing person could have sold Chipotle seasoned dishes in the Fifties in this country? Sure Chipotle has been around a long time, but it’s current popularity is an example of social construction, where a product’s or idea’s acceptance is embedded within the changing needs and tastes of society. It wasn’t invented, it evolved.
I grew up wanting to be a scientist, like Thomas Edison, who “invented” the lightbulb. I thought an inventor worked day and night until he finally discovered just the right combination of vacuum and tungsten filament. At that moment, the miracle of modern electric lighting came into existence. Then I read books like Thomas Hughes’ excellent Networks of Power, and learned that Edison also had to build commercial generators, and a power transmission network, and coerce and probably bribe municipal officials to change the laws to favor electricity over existing gas distribution, and run publicity campaigns to scare the public about the dangers of lighting with gas. He did this at the time that factories were running night shifts and needed a cheaper and cleaner source of lighting, and factory workers were coming home through crime-ridden city streets, and demanded safer street lights. In other words, the lightbulb wasn’t “invented,” because when Edison first made one there was no market for it, and no understanding of its benefits. It wasn’t a lightbulb as we know it today. It was a parlor trick. Oh, and by the way, Edison didn’t even create the first practical lightbulb. That was a lie propagated by his PR people.
So when Mark Zuckerberg started talking about the Social Graph last May, he didn’t invent anything new. It was a social network, and it had been around for years. Only the time was now right, and the users were there, and the rest of the software industry was paying attention, and there was a perceived need for a way to describe this phenomenon. Have marketing scum latched onto this as a way to hype the public and investors? Of course. That is their job, but they didn’t cause its popularity. Can we just stop saying it, dude? Sorry, it isn’t up to us techies. We don’t run things. We don’t invent things. We are embedded within the social graph just like everyone else. Steve Jobs didn’t invent the personal computer, and Bill Gates didn’t invent the operating system, and Mark Zuckerberg didn’t invent the social network, but try and convince your grandkids of that 30 years from now.
