Connection Dynamics - the Social Media Fool's Paradigm

One of the curious aspects of our society is how we are fascinated with our own interactions with one another.  Our days are spent sleeping, eating, working and surviving but it's the ways and means that we deal with one another that gather all the focus.

Watch a period movie about the 17th or 18th century, and it'll be about the letters written to one another that advance the plot, taking a long time as they did.  The messenger in those days always playing a vital connecting role. (I've always smirked at the need to respond quickly in thee fictions, as if an extra day of thought in response would be material to the months it takes to deliver the letters/messages in some cases). Go forward in time and the impact and popularity of mass media from the 1960's-1990's also seems disproportionately noted in any retrospective look back. Sure, it's shared identity, but there were other things going on too.  These days, it's hard to read a paper or have a conversation that doesn't touch on the rise of social media, the newest darling of how we interact.

Let's break this down a little though as there are interesting components here.

That we interact is the first thing.  We have done this for some time as a species in fact.  It's the foundation of our communities and shared vision of who we are and the basis of all politics and economics.  If there's anything that's apparent here it's that this is not new.  Raving about how Pinterest, Snapchat or Linked In connects us all is not only redundant, it belies a lack of understanding of history.

Social Media is here to stay - I'll call that the second thing.  We have already seen some social media die on the vine - AOL anyone ?  Like other mechanisms, it too will evolve and die off.  Arguably Facebook the grand-daddy of all based on it's membership is already losing it core constituency.  Kids are fickle, and what appeals to their mothers doesn't often also appeal to them.  This mechanism will change, and current players aren't guaranteed immortality anymore that the Post Office is. It isn't here to stay, it's simply the flavour of the moment until something more pertinent comes along.

We connect with those we choose to.  That's the third piece here and it's overlooked I might suggest. Way back when we interacted 1:1 as that's what the mechanisms allowed for.  Coffee-houses in London 300-400 years ago and newspapers started to change that, to push one message at multiple parties through portals.  Then mass media (newspapers, then radio, then TV and the web) allowed for broadcasting those singular ideas - in the form of commercials to sell something, or provoking us to believe in something political or emotional.  We all saw the same message as that's what the technology was geared to do.  As it has evolved, we've started to fragment and form sub-groups again, 'liking' a thing or idea on today's platforms, following one another in smaller groups, subsets and long-tails of society and this is impacting how we all deal with each other in the world.

I think this desire to only have a set number of connections is under appreciated in how we look at what social media success means today.  The idea is that it could be unlimited, when in fact we have historically acted to deal with only a small number of others.  Technology doesn't enhance trust, and the internet is full of crud - we all know that.  Instead, we have a small group we look to, that we lean towards,  and as there is more and more noise flooding at us, I'm guessing we'll retreat farther into our circle of trust, only connecting with those we choose to.

And that - perhaps more than any technology out there, will drive the next wave of how we interact.  Social media isn't the end-game, it's a step on the evolutionary ladder.