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Last night when i dreamt, the faces of two friends who I knew in secondary school came before my minds eye. In the intervening years they had met and through Facebook i realized that they were happily dating and looked on their way to marriage. I seldom meet them, just bumped into them both on a date months ago How did they sweep into my mind? My wall feed from Facebook brings fragments and faces up to my subconscious mind which leaks into my dreams. The equations behind it reads people whose profiles i frequently look at or interact with, even in my private messages on facebook (i sometimes use facebook as a social email) and let me know when they change things in their life.
I live on multiple networks. Sociologists describe the friends we have in terms of a network. They've been doing this for decades. Social networks like facebook and friendster encouraged us to pull our our friend on to their sites. Before that, instant messaging programs like ICQ, MSN gave us contact lists and a means to contact our friends. How many people today still use paper phone directories, I stopped using mine when i was 14, the fact i had one would probably make me sound old to my nieces and nephews. I have a "network" of friends. People who i have made a social connection with, acquaintances, friends, close friends, family. I have a digital representation of these networks on MSN, (probably my old ICQ profile if i ever revive it), Skype, Facebook. Not to mention the 'dinosaurs' of email and phone contacts.
My dream came to be (if one thinks dreams are reflections of the fragments that go through our minds in the day) because Facebook brought parts of my "network" of friends to my view. The best bit, is that i'm geographically distant from most of my friends working here in Melbourne (for a few months). i don't actually meet most my friends physically right now. I skype/ phone/ facebook/ email them. This sort of physical distance is perfectly acceptable now-a-days it seems.
More important theoretically is what it means to be "a networked child", having grown up in the age of ICQ. To be grandiose let me state 2 things.
Firstly: Social networks take 2 forms, the social and the digital, these networks resonate and pass information and connections between each other. This will change human interaction quite radically.
Secondly: The most important metaphor for today is the "network". Networks have always been fundamental to industrial and economic development and will even be more obvious in the future.
Allow me to discuss this in a few spheres.
The Social
(1) The great unknown mass of people
Whenever i'm on facebook and i click on a profile where i have NO mutual friends or just a few, i'm reminded that I am only one little kid in a small town. There are tons of people with other friendships and relationships which are just as real to them. Everybody has boys and girls and men and women and older friends whom they know... its always been that way, just right now, i can see it on their friend-list on facebook. Its more real because i can see the faces of these friends... (like.. that girl's profile picture reminds me of my crazy friend... Ishallnotmentionnames)
Most of us have had one or two friends online who we actually don't know in person, particularly from the MIRC days. Or, less frequently real world acquaintances who we have gotten to know better through common online interests.
I'd point out 2 types of social spaces on the web. One space is for strangers to meet, this is almost always around a common interest. [There's a great theory that almost explains this in the paper <<>> ]
The other space is for people who know each other to have recurring connections/conversations/interactions.
Some spaces, like the now defunct online game Metaplace had both of these (a social networking site and a virtual world for people to meet) or people pull friends between these spaces. (like the people on Tirnua.com -a virtual world- who asked me to add them on facebook)
(2) 'Real' and digital networks of people reinforce each other
The people that I know in real life, are also often part of my digital social network. They move in between these networks and friendships gain additional momentum from this movement. Let me illustrate. I used to always see this girl on the bus/train. Do note that in most urban societies, there are also physical transport networks, that determine our social interaction, for example, shopping malls are usually at bus interchanges and shops at traffic junctions, because more people meet there. (the person who knows the most people in an office is the guy who sits next to the toilet according to some research) So.. i see this girl on the same bus/train every 6 months or so, turns out we live on the same street. (Same node on the network, which increases the probability of meeting over time) We meet at an event, because we have mutual friends. This is all part of 'real' networks. We add each other on facebook and i move house to another area, we're part of each other's digital networks now. We stay in touch on facebook and meet and help each other out from time to time on different things when our interests converge. Eventually we become close friends through constant exchanges of private messages.
(3) People have multiple networks.
"On the internet, nobody knows you're a dog" is the old saying, on digital spaces, we can reconstruct our own identity. Actually, we do this in real life too. A friend once told me about his confusion between the spheres of his life, he has his Clubbing Friends, School Friends, Church Friends, Hobby Friends. and 'its so weird' when people from different spheres meet. Some of our friends know us only in that particular context, e.g work. and its simply that sort of friendship.
Ethnographer Sherry Turkle quotes a psychologist's theory on identity at the end of her book 'Life In The Screen', that each of us have different identities all in the same person. We live out each of these different identities in different contexts. If these contacts are described by our friends, than maybe we do have multiple different social networks. (using different terms, we are members of different communities)
The Economic
Networks have been critical in economic development. The rail network in the 1800s was critical to the take-off of the industrial revolution in France and Germany. Simply because they facilitated the exchange of goods, networks and information.
The internet has done something similar, and i'd propose the idea that because it was so efficient, we found ways to digitize as many goods and services as possible.
Social networks are critical in doing business. Francis Fukuyama theorizes that trust is critical to do business, in countries with low levels of general trust between strangers, and low confidence in the legal system, social ties between powerful families and their companies become the critical way of doing business. Essentially, there's a social circle of powerful people at the top of a society who run everything.
How does this work on the internet and in the future? Well, no different in the way it works. We need a way to exchange things (web or rail or road...) and we need to know that business agreements can be honoured. The question is: How can we make new forms of social connections that support business? Company-led marketplaces like Apple's Appstore helps combine the 2 principles above, and helps strangers to sell things to each other.
The Emotional
Humans need company to feel loved and appreciated. And our social connections make us happy. These 'real' social ties and strong relationships have been supported by things like Facebook and Skype.
However there are real questions that remain. Urban alienation is everywhere in our cities. Lots of people are metaphorically standing at the store window and looking in on relationships on the internet. If friends bring happiness, how do digital relationships change that?
I only have questions here:
a) What kind of interaction do we need to have to make us happy. To listen, to look at each other in the eye, to hug? How do we express affection, as well as share in each others' lives? I can see my friends' emotions on Facebook sometimes, i can feel for them, but this is a private feeling, is this a relationship?
b) How much 'disclosure' is good. (how many people am i telling things to? what am i saying? how much am I saying?) There are people who live their lives 'online' telling people how they feel from their status updates, and others who don't. Who's happier?
Obviously emotions, and happiness depend so much on the individual and their life story and their point in their lives.
The future: I'm going to try to read more about this and understand it, I won't have the time to make this into a full academic study, and there's tons of great papers written on social networks and even a book based on some of these great papers. (One of Malcolm Gladwell's popular books draws on work by Mark Grannovetter's research on social networks)
The real points of interest are based on my 2 'grandiose statements'
Firstly Social networks now bounce between the digital and the "real" world, and i've seen on my online wanderings much evidence for multiple social networks on the web interacting, migrating and doing all sorts of interesting things. I'm curious about how the digital and real social networks interact and will change our society.
Secondly In economic history, there's never been a serious consideration of how networks in all their different permutations have shaped our world today. There's room for a great book on that (not written by me of course lol...), and how the first trend of 'real' and digital networks will impact the economic history of the future.
Right now, my working idea is this:
The world of the future will look like China's internet today. Full of bored, underemployed people (who were once young internet denziens), some will make money in a vast online cottage industry, a la Ebay, others will just spend their free time on the web.
There isn't enough 'real' work to go around because of hyper efficient large enterprises who over-work a few highly paid people, so most people will be bored, underemployed and online, spending their time with friends and activities on the web. The economic reality of low employment, may co-incide with a society that is networked on multiple levels, and very new forms of play, social life, and work can emerge.
