This post is in direct response to @jmichele’s article (brought to attention by @timoreilly), and @PatParslow’s subsequent commentary. I recommend their material as prerequisite reading.
There is certainly something to be said regarding the notion of Twitter as a sort of cybernetic system. I feel as though it is a bit too early to use “brain” as its proper analogy, however, for the simple fact that unlike a biological brain, it is not Twitter that makes governing use of the information it receives, but rather the larger human creature that exists simultaneously throughout and outside of it. In this regard, it could be considered as more along the lines of synapses, providing a conduit through which neurons (people) can talk to each other. This, in turn, allows coordination of otherwise-disconnected systems (social, political, and geographic structures could adorn an abundance of metaphors such as muscular, skeletal, digestive, etc. but that is territory onto which I needn’t venture).
In this light, Twitter as much as its users compose Ross’s “social nervous system”, albeit a very rudimentary one. At present, it is confined only to those initiated into its culture sector and constrained in function by the “DNA” (server technology) that defines it. I think that it is merely the caveman step in an evolution that will become evermore apparent in the coming decades. I see this new evolution as picking up where Nature left off. Because let’s face it: humans are done evolving Darwin’s way. We have plateaued biologically; our resources are abundant and survival is no longer an overbearing concern for us as a species. The gift of “free time” is what has allowed us to come as far as we have. Though we have always been craftsmen, our development has recently shifted focus from utilitarian tools to supererogatory ones.
And, it doesn’t take too keen an eye to notice the increasingly personal role these tools are taking in our lives. Ten years ago, the Internet was a novelty service and mobile phones were but luxury items. Today, the Internet is the biggest dissemination of information to the masses, and mobile phones are largely considered instruments of safety. As these changes in perception occur, so too do size and cost, shrinking in accordance with Moore’s Law. This has resulted in the amplification of the mundane, which eludes a generation before this that “kept such things to themselves”, lacking both the means and expectation of doing otherwise. In reality, the minutiae of their lives were expressed interpersonally, rather than internationally; now, things are different only in the scale of such things.
This neophobia manifests itself primarily in critics’ dismissal of every popular social Web technology, adhering to the viewpoint that the current generation must be the most narcissistic one in history. Though this statement may be true, it is not necessarily worthy of the derision with which it is delivered. Humans have always been narcissistic (natural selection ensured this; can you imagine anyone involving themselves in affairs with no perceivable benefit for them in doing so?); people are just less ashamed of it now. And it’s a good thing, too, because without that narcissism we would not be able to take full advantage of social networks.
For instance, on Twitter, one follows the activities of those that interest them. The commonality between the two can be hobbies, industry, kinship, familiarity, admiration, or a host of other things. Regardless of the link, the point is that in this voluntary, ad hoc system, we are inherently grouping together things that are related. Good not only from a metadata standpoint, this also directly mirrors the function of cells, which exist independently of each other but are associated with similar cells so that they may work in concert to achieve a specific task. At 140 characters apiece, we do not collect much information individually. Collectively, however, we cultivate a ton, which is then naturally filtered out by the system and delivered to the relevant parts of the “body”.
From this fashioning of social networks in the manner of neural networks, and with the convergence of the personal with the technological, it becomes quite apparent to me that in our future lies the structuring of a complex sociotechnological organism, in every way alive as we consider ourselves. Having composed ourselves biologically, we are starting to take on new definition as parts of a whole rather than mere autonomous agents; a “collective” not unlike the Borg of Star Trek. The comment section of Ross’s article indicated some opposition to his use of the term “hivemind”, but ignoring the dronish connotations this word is actually perfect in describing what will become of communication when mental thoughts and online statuses inevitably converge. This level of hyperconnectivity with machines and each other is not yet within our grasp, but it is fully within our reach. Call Twitter a “fad” if you will; as a service in its present form that may very well turn out to be the case, but make no mistake as to its impact, for the look of the creature that operates by way of us, the Social Nervous System, will be decided in the trenches of today’s chat sites.
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