Social Kapital Joel Postman

Earlier this month I was at Macworld, and I spotted the following quote from Martin Luther King, Jr. on a plaque at a fountain in San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center:

“We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”

Dr. King spoke these words on April 4, 1967, in a speech titled “Beyond Vietnam,” delivered to the Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam, at Riverside Church, New York City. Ironic to read this 31 years later, within a few hundred feet of Moscone Center and Macworld, high temple of technology fetish.

I thought Dr. King’s words offered some good advice to those of us in social media, reminding us of the most powerful uses of this technology, and to not forget the social aspect, which is, of course, people.