Saturday 26 April 2008

Facebook - bringing back the village shop

Leaving aside the 'serious' side of social networking for the moment - journalism, marketing, education, research and all that stuff - I've been thinking around what social networking is doing to/for people in general.

And it's replacing the village shop.

Now there's well publicised research and academic stuff which suggests that humans are evolved to live in relatively small groups, a couple of hundred individuals or so, and it's a pretty convincing story.

It's not a big jump to suggest that our mobile society, in which friends move away and become less easily accessible, creates significant psychological stress as we try to deal with people we are emotionally attached to but never see. I know it stresses me. Because every contact, rather than being an informal two minutes as our paths cross in a common environment, becomes an event, which has to be got right, and I don't know what's going on with them right now, and maybe I'll have a think and do it tomorrow.

And facebook (and bebo and myspace, I'm sure, but I don't go there) is bringing it back. I have some idea what they're up to, so long as they do the status update thing. I know that they have similar info about me. And they seem less distant. Facebook is the new village shopkeeper, who tells you that Norma was in last week, and one of her kids has had chicken pox, and you tell him that you've been busy with your new hobby...

Now I'm not suggesting social networking will fix everything, nor that it doesn't bring new problems. But it's here, it's staying, and it's a way to live our hectic diconnected modern lives that we're not really eveolved to cope with.

Or maybe I should lay off the barley wine for a bit.

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