Palo Alto , California ( CNN ) -- If your company bans you from using Twitter , Facebook , LinkedIn and other social media in the office , that policy is `` brain dead '' , entrepreneur Vivek Wadhwa told me . Wadhwa , listed as one of the 40 most influential minds in tech , is right of course . And here are five reasons , borrowing from several books published this year . 1 . It 's self-defeating . Dictatorial office managers be warned . Banning social media at work is about as viable as King Canute 's attempts to halt the tide . As Nicco Mele argues in `` The End of Big : Howe the Internet Makes David the New Goliath '' , social media is actually contributing to the demise of the large organization . Besides , since most workers now have their own smart phones and tablets , it 's actually impossible -- without establishing an all-seeing totalitarian regime at the office -- to stop workers peeking a look at the their Facebook updates or Twitter feeds while in the restroom . 2 . It 's such an old idea . Even the word `` banning '' is archaic . As Moises Naim argues in `` The End of Power '' , by undermining traditional hierarchies and gatekeepers , the Internet makes it more and more difficult to outlaw anything . `` Being in charge is n't what it used to be , '' he notes in the book 's subtitle . Middle Eastern dictators should , of course , beware . But so should formerly all-powerful office IT directors or HR managers whose monopoly of authority and power has been undermined by the worldwide web . Like Tahrir Square , the 21st century office has been radically democratized . Tightly controlled , top-down offices do n't work anymore . They are so 20th century . 3 . Social media is the new coffee break . It 's the 21st century version of the water cooler . It 's how we get our news , keep up with friends and colleagues , make our social arrangements , establish our identities and view the world . Our obsessive use of social media means that we are all living in the perpetual present , says CNN columnist Douglas Rushkoff in `` Present Shock : When Everything Happens Now '' . It 's what social media gurus Robert Scoble and Shel Israel describe , in `` Age of Context '' . As Scoble notes , this social media rich environment , in which everything we do becomes `` social data '' , is what he calls the `` new world '' . This is both `` scary '' and `` freaky '' , as Scoble acknowledges . But it 's an inevitable as self-driving cars or wearable computers . To ban social media , therefore , is to essentially ban people at work . It 's like outlawing talking or laughing . You might as well ban breathing . 4 . Multitasking is beneficial . As anyone with children knows , multitasking is how digital natives live their hyper-connected lives . And the same is increasingly true at work . Once upon a time , we sat in an office all day then went home to enjoy our leisure . But today , work and leisure are inextricably connected . So that occasional tweet or Facebook update from the office does n't mean you are n't working . It just means that some of your brain might be temporarily focused on something else . But that temporary focus describes the nature of 21st century work . It 's how we all -- even the most efficient among us -- operate in the networked age . As Jane McGonigal notes in her best-seller `` Reality is Broken : Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World '' , multitasking actually makes us more creative by stimulating our playfulness . 5 . It makes us more productive because it opens up our minds . Social media not only enables us to group-solve big problems , but also makes us more literate , able to think with more independence and gives us an ESP-like sense of what other people are thinking , according to Clive Thompson in `` Smarter Than You Think : How Technology is Changing Our Minds for the Better '' . Through Twitter , we get access to newspaper articles and stories that we would otherwise have missed . LinkedIn enables us to network with fellow workers . Facebook gives us intelligence about competitive ideas and companies . And banning social media at work only empowers that intelligence even more by encouraging us to network with more open-minded and innovative companies . The FutureCast conference brought together entrepreneurs , venture capitalists , writers and technologists to imagine the future of 21st century digital society . It was organized and produced by Andrew Keen and was hosted by AT & T and Ericsson at AT & T 's Palo Alto Foundry .
Bosses should be careful about people going on social media at work , says Jim Keen . It increases creativity and benefits the company or employees , he argues . And anyway , you ' n't be able to stop it , he warns employees .