Are social networking sites taking over our lives?

I often wonder how the world would be today if social networking sites never existed. Would we communicate less? Would we use technology as much as we do now? Or would we take a more personal approach in maintaining our friendships? The existence of Facebook and other social networking sites have allowed people from all around the world to communicate, allowing new relationships to form. Social networking sites provide its users with an easier way to communicate, enabling people to maintain their social relationships.

Social networking sites also have their downside, by using them; we are choosing to take the personal elements away from communication. Instead we are now using new forms of technology to interact with our friends, family and loved ones. Alternatively we could make time to communicate and socialise with the person face to face, but sometimes face to face communication is not possible. It is these kinds of situations that make social networking sites an unexpected benefit. Facebook allows its users the chance to connect and communicate with people from all around the world. Giving its users the opportunity and an easier way to maintain relationships and friendships with people that they would not normally see on a regular basis.

If social network sites weren’t around then maybe people wouldn’t communicate as much. Facebook might keep millions of people around the world glued to their computers and laptops, but it does allow them to communicate and socialise with an unlimited amount of people with just a click of a button. It may create some negative outcomes, but overall I believe most social network sites have helped us communicate and socialise more.

Will Online Social Networking Sites Make Us Smarter?

Based on the whole Dunbar’s number concept, I did some extra reading on this idea and found that Robin Dunbar looked at primates and compared the size of their brains with humans. To cut a long story short, the larger the brain (or at least the neocortex area of it), the larger the average size of groups one can live in.

Human’s brains are larger than the primates obviously, yet with Dunbar’s number being around 150, does that also mean that Human brains hit a certain limit? That it simply cannot get any bigger? Perhaps with Social Networking sites it will. Perhaps the average size of groups with the online social networking addition can be 200, 500 or even 1000. Nevertheless, we may have to start measuring the average size of groups with a Dunbar 2.0 figure of maybe 700 (according to Dan Tapscott in “Grown Up Digital”, 2008).

You might think that maybe one doesn’t get smarter simply by having more friends surely? Well, think of it this way, say you have a group of friends called ‘group 1’, in ‘group 1’, you have two friends, friend A and friend B. In this group, you are unconsciously managing 3 relationships; your own relationship with friend A and friend B and what you know of the relationship between friend A and friend B excluding yourself. Simple enough so far, but what if you increase the number of friends in that group to 10, you now have to manage your own relationships with each individual and the pairs of relationships between your friends. As you can see, this will get horrendously exponential very quickly.

This applies in today’s world even more, with so many people flocking to online social networking sites and learning of ‘friends in common’ just adds to this. Making the concept of 6 degrees of separation a reality, perhaps not even 6 degrees, maybe less, perhaps 4 or 3 degrees, some suggest 2 degrees. With this smaller degree of separation, will this push our Dunbar number even further?

Like the song the Sherman Brothers once wrote for Disney, “It’s a small world after all”.

Suppression orders and the net

Cameron Slater is now in court here in Auckland charged with breaching court suppression orders. As right-wing blogger Whale Oil, he has argued that some suppression orders are against the public's right to know and/or free speech.

This brings up some tricky issues. Does an accused have a right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty? Does someone in the media have the right to decide unilaterally that a law is wrong? Should suppression orders that apply to trad media apply to new media? Has the horse already bolted?

There is an undeniable charm about this current period we are all living through in the infancy of the internet (I'm taking a long-term view here). Anarchy appeals and virtual anarchy appeals even more as theoretically no-one gets hurt, not like the bad old days of anarchy when people got killed in real life.

But I wouldn't like to be in the shoes of someone remotely famous falsely accused of a sex crime in New Zealand right now. Chances are I'd be outed by the Cameron Slaters of this world and my reputation slashed before I even got near the chance to defend myself.

Which is not an argument for censorship or other forms of control of the net. I suspect that our current laws can be seen to be working as Slater is now in court. The judge has described Whale Oil's blogs as "like a shotgun blast, it hits the person and then other people he doesn't want to hit". Slater is arguing semantics, saying he published pictures (clues to the accused's identity) but he's not telling people how to interpret them and they're really just random online doodles. I wouldn't put money on the judge seeing it his way.

In the meantime, just for entertainment, Slater is going up against Andrew Williams in a North Shore ward in the upcoming Auckland elections. His first pledge: I will not piss on any trees.

Says it all really - about both him and Andrew Williams.

Attention

It has taken ages to write this post. I keep getting distracted. It has resulted in rambles. Luckily, you don’t have to read it. Scroll up to the next one, or down to the one before. (The blog is a great equalizer. assuming you are like me and read a paragraph here and there like a bird randomly pecking for seeds).

The problem is attention. I don’t have enough attention to read all the posts (I'm editing this post-publish because I saw someone else already published an "Attention" blog, citing Mark Bauerlein), much less keep up with the one-decent-sized-paragraph-a-week assignment. It’s not too much, I just keep forgetting, and then there isn’t much that has not been said by everyone else. I’m almost certain that you don’t want to read a bulleted confessional, but I also suspect that the 1 or 2 people who have made it to the centre (even past the half way mark!) of this paragraph—its deepest darkest depth—must be bored. Perhaps I lack creativity, or brain space. Maybe I’m just tired, but I have this growing feeling in the back of my mind that I’m forgetting about something.

A bunch of brain scientists went walking through the woods. ( I don’t know the punch-line to this joke). They have suggested the possibility that technology is over-taxing our brains, and spawning a class of forgetful and worried people. Technology produces anxiety. The anticipation of emails takes up brain energy. They suggest we take a hike to clear our minds (assuming that we go somewhere relaxing, away from the lions and tigers and gun-runners, etc.). I’m not averse to physical activity, but who has the time?

The next thing is to study people’s brains on meditation because those people can focus. Or maybe they already have. No surprises, those people also have bigger brains, especially in that attention span area of the brain. Somehow, they have found the time. I’ll think about adding that to my to-do list, right after “remember what it is that I’m supposed to do before Monday. sell all my stuff, do whatever it is I'm supposed to do before Monday, and not to forget, take a hike.”