Why You Should Circle the Wagons & Stay on the Porch...

Social Media tips for the Southcoast, MA – DECENTRALIZE.  GET AWAY BY STAYING PUT.  RATCHET DOWN.  KNUCKLE DOWN.  DOUBLE DOWN.  KEEP YOUR MONEY IN-TOWN. – I just read The End Of The Social Network Era, The Rise Of The Social Circle Era by Jason Schwartz, Matchbook on the Business Insider site.  It seems that the concept that I’ve kicked around on this blog about solving many of our education and employment problems by resurrecting the concept and function of neighborhoods and villages is spilling over into cyberspace.  What Mr. Schwartz says is, “Social Networks are characterized by, "Friend Everyone, Share Everything."  Social Circles will be characterized by "Group Dynamically, Share Selectively." Social Circles will focus on groups, automatically created based on a person’s real life social circles.”

“They will dynamically shift to include new close friends and remove those that become distant. “Friends” will come to mean the same thing as it does in the real world, a group of people whom you share a close connection with. Content will be shared selectively with those that it’s most relevant to, mirroring the intimate sharing of real-life friendships.” In marketing; birds of a feather flock together.   

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe – not Marshall McLuhan said that, “less is more.” McLuhan however, did say, “The medium is the message. This is merely to say that the personal and social consequences of any medium - that is, of any extension of ourselves -result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology.” When a new technology is born, consumers tend to apply it in ways not imagined by the creator of the technology.  For example, when Gutenberg printed the first Bible, you’d think it would create a demand for books of all kinds.  It did but the demand for anti-papist pamphlets outpaced book orders.  Another example is photography.  Within a year of its debut in France, the porn industry was at full tilt.  Eventually everything finds its own niche.

Social networking driven by My Space and Facebook was originally adopted by users under the age of twenty-five.  That demographic wasn’t socially mature or experienced enough to value or understand the concepts of privacy and permanency and shared (an old word with new meaning) everything and anything with anyone and with everyone.  This exemplified Andy Warhol and his prediction that everyone would have their 15-minutes of fame.  Facebook has now evolved and is being used as part of standard operating procedure for businesses and now education as well.  Its core uses are now, however, are women between the ages of 35 and 65.  Twitter too has been embraced by business and education.

McLuhan also said, “As the unity of the modern world becomes increasingly a technological rather than a social affair, the techniques of the arts provide the most valuable means of insight into the real direction of our own collective purposes.”  He’s one for two.  Technology has woven itself into the social fabric as social networking.  But the arts, for the exception of the movies, have been affected by other shifts in society; but more about this another time.

In my own simple words, “what goes up must come down and what was once important now seems silly in retrospect.”  Technology is fantastic.  It’s not new.  Technology isn’t a thing; it’s the activity of inventing and producing the materials, methods and machines that make our lives better.  The telegraph was, in its day, cutting edge.  Technology, although it offers us the benefits of faster, cheaper and better; is not what makes life worth living.  Having everything that the World has to offer available to you on the Internet 24/7 is great.  Not knowing who your neighbor isn’t.  Not knowing anything about your town isn’t.  Not really knowing most of the Friends in your social network is, well, stupid. 

When I say knowing, I mean really knowing.  Would you invite all of these friends to your home or go out to dinner with them with some frequency at their particular level of knowing?  Have our egos become so fragile that our need for affection and belonging can only be measured by the amount of “friends” we’ve collected and the number and frequency of their adjudged likes in regards to even our most mundane activities?  Sure, social networking has closed the gap on distance and frequency of communication with family and real friends in a way that the telephone, email and the mail could not.  But...

Before I move on to Social Circles, let me remind you that social networking isn’t new at all.  The technology that currently defines it is however.  Social networking was wherever neighbors gathered or associated while performing the mundane tasks of laundry, fetching water or getting a coffee at the local coffee shop.  Hanging out your laundry was social networking – it was also very public.  Your laundry spoke volumes about you. Frilly nickers or holes in your nickers?  Bright white-whites or dull grey-whites?  The whole family was represented by age, gender and occupation.  So, yes, Social Circles are naturally characterized by the group’s dynamics including what they share or have in common, which defines their selective-ness, or perhaps more correctly commonality and communality.

Mr. van der Rohe was correct, “less is more.”  Or, as the classic Volkswagen advertising campaign of the Sixties exclaimed: Think Small.  Actually, this is all about social sustainability.  As the New Urbanism website calls proposes; cities that offer more:

• Walkability
• Connectivity
• Mixed-Use & Diversity
• Mixed Housing
• Quality Architecture & Urban Design
• Traditional Neighborhood Structure
• Increased Density
• Smart Transportation
• Sustainability
• Quality of Life

You’re nobody until somebody loves you.  The requirements for happiness have always been control, affection and belonging.  Social networking gives us those requirements in a something is better than nothing sort of way.  Ain’t nothing like the real thing baby - Buddha said, “He who loves 50 people has 50 woes; he who loves no one has no woes.”  Can that thought be correlated to: He who has 50 Friends expects at least 50 Likes; he who has no Friends has no Likes.”  Finally, McLuhan said that art, but I believe technology fits here and, “…at its most significant is a distant early warning system that can always be relied on to tell the old culture what is beginning to happen.”  Perhaps Social Networking, umm, Social Circles, are a portent of things to come.  It’s a wonderful day in the neighborhood!