Behavioral evolution through transparency
Hugh’s Law: All social networks eventually evolve into a swampy mush of spam.
Kaila’s Hypothesis: Swampy mushes of spam, coupled with near-infinite transparency, will force genuine behavior.
I just finished reading The Cult of the Amateur, which paints a pretty grim picture of the evolution of the Internet. According to Andrew Keen, the world is falling to bits, talented people are forced to go begging, and nobody has any use for real news anymore because bloggers—ahem—are illegitimately claiming to be legitimate journalists.
He may be right.
At the same time, I tend to have a bit more faith in humanity. And, while you may be yelling, “Naive optimist!” at your monitor, my faith is not driven by a belief in our inherent goodness or capacity to overcome. It’s driven instead by an understanding of the cyclical nature of our universe, and a confidence that we will continue to evolve cyclically.
When I was a kid, I learned about a population growth model for wild animals. Animals in an area where food was abundant would reproduce heartily until their numbers caused demand to outstrip the food supply, which would subsequently dwindle. Because of the lack of food supply, animals would die off, until population stability was reached. Cyclical.
Housewives became Type A executives as the feminist movement opened doors; now it’s become admirable again to be a stay-at-home mom. Cyclical.
Gary Fisher launched a mountain bike movement that resulted in machines with cutting-edge engineering more advanced than that of motorcycles: ultrasensitive transmissions, dynamically adaptive shock absorbers, precision control of damping and rebound. Today the coolest of the cool are riding single-speed bikes with no suspension at all. Cyclical.
Social networks devolve into swampy mushes of spam, driving a hunger for genuine interaction that carries more meaning than a poke or a bite and forcing the creation of platforms that offer such a possibility. Cyclical.
The unfiltered broadcast of our lives forces us to be ever more cautious about how our behavior is perceived, which causes us to make more conscious decisions about the behavior itself. Companies are forced to walk the walk of delivering value or face the wrath of the marketplace. And, while technology opens the door to gaming the system, it also opens the door to quick and severe repercussions to those trying to gain unfair advantage by faking genuineness.
Don’t lament the downfall of society just yet, neither celebrate its enlightenment. It’s all cyclical.
February 24th, 2008 at 9:08 am
Yes! I’ve been noticing this cyclical pattern as well, and things aren’t so bad as people say.
In the old days, music was all live. Then came the big labels and records. Now, record stores are closing down, musicians have more power to release their own stuff, lots of crap gets released along with the good, the ones who can perform live (people are valuing this experience again because anyone can be auto-tuned in a studio) make more money from tours, so its back to good live music. Cyclical.
February 24th, 2008 at 11:08 pm
Hmmm, what’s a “legitimate journalist” ?
February 25th, 2008 at 3:21 am
Kaila said: “Social networks devolve into swampy mushes of spam, driving a hunger for genuine interaction that carries more meaning than a poke or a bite and forcing the creation of platforms that offer such a possibility. Cyclical.”
Right on Kaila. I hear people saying that online social networks are the domain of young people, which I don’t entirely agree with, but I’m more interested in what happens as these young users get older, and take on the responsibilities that age seems to put on us, taking up all our spare time to “hang about in Bebo”. How will their behaviour online change as they have less free time? Will they find they only have time for quick things like Twitter, when things like Bebo and Facebook require more time to get benefit from? Will they move to doing this sort of stuff on a mobile device, as Japanese people are apparently doing now with blogging?
February 25th, 2008 at 4:03 pm
Kaila, in an excellent Point/Counterpoint-style piece done by the WSJ (warning: long):
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118460229729267677.html
David Weinberger argues well an alternative vision to Keen’s.
When Worlds Collide! Internet Time meets Evolutionary Time!
February 26th, 2008 at 4:18 am
Hi everyone!
Thanks so much for the comments.
@shelleyleong, great example! And don’t you remember all the people lamenting the growth of big-box labels and retailers? I wonder if those are the same people lamenting their demise…
@Andrew: A ‘legitimate journalist’ is someone who has a ‘legitimate editor’ who, in turn, works for a ‘legitimate publication’ (probably a print one) that is read by ‘legitimate consumers.’ For more on this, see my post Lies and Stories in Life and Marketing.
@Greg: I suspect what we’ll see is the breakdown of value vs. novelty. A certain portion of current social media usage (can anyone say, ‘Vampire bites’?) is driven by the novelty factor, which will wear off pretty quickly and need to be replaced by another novel thing. Value’s the stuff that will endure. It’s important to keep in mind, though, that there’s value to be had in just hanging out doing nothing, otherwise where would the malls and television be today?
@Mark: haven’t gotten to the WSJ piece yet, but I will! Thanks for the tip.