This is one of my thinking out loud posts. I apologize in advance that this is a little rambling.
Over 10 years ago I did my senior thesis in Computer Mediated Communications. I was studying chat-rooms and whether this new digital medium affected our communication behaviors and norms. Guess what I learned? We behave the same online as we do offline! I know not really groundbreaking. Guess that’s why I didn’t win a Nobel Peace Prize for my work (I did however get an A).It should be noted that there are much larger effects on our society that do affect the way we communicate but our basic norms stay the same.
I recently had a discussion with Albert Maruggi on Twitter about technology and human predictability. It resulted in this question from Albert that I’ve been meaning to use as a blog post on a related topic.
@tacanderson a deep thought for you, are we trying to get machines 2b more human or humans 2b more like machines eg. efficient, predictable 4:08 AM Apr 30th
Bursts: The Hidden Pattern Behind Everything We Do
The discussion I had with Albert was sparked by a different Albert and a link I shared to the digital version of the new book Burst by Albert-László Barabási (ALB). (seriously check out the Burst site, it’s an amazing effort).
ALB’s last book, Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means
Digitizing our Behavior
Up until now we have largely had to modify our our preferred communication behaviors in order to use the limited digital tools we’ve had available. Social media has created a technology shift that allows us to behave more like we do in real life. In my view social media isn’t changing our behavior as much as it is revealing it. It will however have profound affects on business.
There’s a lot of Facebook backlash right now with their recent announcements. Once we get over the shock, and the illusion of privacy, we’ll get on with life. This isn’t meant to sound callus (because I’ve seen the future if this gets out of control) but we can’t put the genie back in the bottle and we would be better spent trying to determine the appropriate uses of the genie than how to reverse it.
Is there any greater mystery to mankind than itself?
Our quest for better technology and the ability to predict human behavior is partly driven by marketing and business opportunities but I believe that it’s more the result of our desire to understand ourselves.
Think about this for a minute: What really scares people about social media is that it is revealing who we really are.
I agree with danah boyd that we have to be careful with all this data and just because we can do something doesn’t mean we should. But trying to hide the digital trail we leave behind would be like trying to stop us from being human.
- As we live more digital lives we create more digital data.
- People will collect and categorize that data to better understand it because that’s what humans do.
- Trying to stop people from collecting and understanding data is as fruitless as trying to stop us from leaving a digital footprint.
So to answer Albert’s question, I don’t think we’re trying to make humans more machine like or machines more human like, I think we’re just trying to understand ourselves better. Not to get metaphysical/religious here but isn’t that what life’s really about?
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