• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, June 17, 2010

The big change taking place in media and society isn't the breakthrough of a new technological platform, so much as it is the simplification of well-established ones. That's the view of B. Bonin Bough, global director of digital and social media at PepsiCo, and opening keynoter at OMMA Social in New York.

Bough, who is one of the "pioneers" of social media, says the transformational technologies have been around since the early days of the Internet. What makes them different now, and why they are gaining critical mass, is that the "interfaces" for using them have grown simpler.

"It used to be only 'Revenge of the Nerds' guys who could use it. And now it's the 'Brady Bunch' that uses it," he said.

Bough likened the impact of these new technologies to the invention of the clock. Until then, Bough said that people simply ate and slept when they wanted to, but after they became cognizant of time - or at least, timepieces - Bough said they began "living their lives like clockwork."

He didn't say exactly how social media was impacting societ, but he asserted that it definitely would transform society.

Former "Nerd" Bough