No one will argue the fact that we all live in a networked world. You connected to me, connected to another, and another, and to the whole world. True? Well, not quite. Take a detailed look into this networked world; you will find that it is a chain of islands, with spaces between each other…. It is islands of online communities, groups, niche networks, etc…
You realize that this online world (especially the social networking) is not one big homogeneous society, but a collection of different types of groups. But looking at our past we know that human advancement has been on basis of creating a homogeneous society… From being a small group of hunters and gatherers, to forming large communities, building villages, city states, empires, and to nation states of today… Now that we have the technology and the medium to create this homogeneous society, even if it is online, why do we shy from doing so?
If we look back at the start of the Internet – it was a repository of information that can be accessed from multiple locations. Information that can be de-centralized, shared, and saved so that it can be accessed by people despite not being physically present in the location. Soon with the advent of technology and the coming of emails, Instant Messaging, Chat rooms, real time publishing and sharing of information all added to internet becoming a medium of communication. The growing successes of today’s social media sites are proof that people now prefer Internet as a medium of communication rather than a repository of information.
While the modern science has the tremendous power of accelerating of the mental evolution process of human mind, human beings prefer to have an uncomplicated life. They still are more concerned about their immediate universe than the world at large. While peace and security could be the key drivers for people aspire for homogeneous society, the fear of unknown is much more powerful.
An inherent human predisposition is to relate and identify with ‘your own’. As Humans are ill equipped to live on their own, they commit themselves to a group. Close interactions within a group gives rise to strong cultural and ethnic identity. And to recognize and create a sense of identity one takes the help of symbols and signs. In olden days this was usually done either through the way one dressed, and overt symbols like beads, threads, head gears, etc that one identified the group. As the society became more homogeneous, these were discarded. But till few decades back the growth of society was limited by geography. This limitation is now erased with technology and the all pervasive online world it has created.
Social Media while allowing the ease of connectivity has also increased the chances for fear of unknown to enter your life more easily. This leads to building protective firewalls, and a stronger reason to relate and identify with ‘your own’ in the online space. Hence we fall back on creating identification symbols.
In future, as each social media platforms seamlessly integrate with each other (this trend has already begun, with cross platform integration – Orkut – Twitter – Facebook, etc) humans will tend to closely guard themselves by forming groups… And since the communication is real-time, they will form a strong bonding and will create unique identity for themselves… and similar to the tribalism of the past, the bonding will make it hard for people to either leave a group or to join a group
In today’s online space most of the groups are formed basis common interest, hobbies, religion, alumni, or even a cause. While some of the superficial reasons will not be popular in the future…some like religion (or ideology), sex, and family would be prime motivators for creating groups online
While we talk about a homogeneous society for progression of Humanity…We still mostly live by instincts. Humans are after all social ‘animals’ :)
Cheers
