"We can't influence the direction of technology, but we can influence its character," says Kevin Kelly, founder of WIRED, in a recent interview with Krista Tippett.  

During the formative years of derivatives technology, we on Wall Street argued earnestly that responsible self-regulation of derivatives would enable innovation to unlock the potential efficiencies and resulting economic prosperity that was the promise.   Undue government regulation, no matter how well-meaning and thoughtfully crafted, would impede innovation that this technology made inevitable.   Furthermore, there would be unintended consequences "worse than the disease."  We were wrong.

It turns out that the character of Wall Street, reflecting on the insight Kevin Kelly shared in his Krista Tippett interview, was not up to the challenge.   Derivatives were hijacked by reckless speculators, manipulators, and, in certain cases, outright fraudsters.   Derivatives, as a result, is now a dirty word.

Far more than financial derivatives, social media brings the promise of immense social welfare through previously unimagined connectivity and the network effect, which makes each social platform exponentially more valuable as more people and organizations join it.   Like derivatives in the early years, social media as a technology is largely unregulated.   As with derivatives, this is in part because would-be regulators struggle to understand it, much less keep up with its rapid evolution, and its many uses and abuses. Will social media become the derivatives of tomorrow?