Practically everyone on this earth now knows some kind of social networking sites. Be it Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Whatsapp, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Path, Renren or Weibo. We use one or more of these sites in our daily life, to post pictures, messages, comments or life status updates. Do these social networking sites really represent our social life? Does it really help us to connect as we connect in real life?
During our day to day life, we interact with our family, friends, neighbors, relatives, colleagues and strangers. Important point is, all with whom we interact are not our friends. We do not share all the information with everyone. Even with our friends, we do not share everything with everyone.
For example, I’ve friends with whom I discuss technology but not politics or religion. With others, I discuss sports but not about technology. Most of my friends are interested in photography. Some of them have SLR, some have DSLR and some have mirrorless SLR. Some are interested in bird watching, some are interested in profile / portrait photographs, some are interested in ‘click everything under the Sun’ kinda photography. Topics are not necessarily being shared among all my friends who are interested in photography.
Real life helps you to avoid information overload. It forces you to connect and explore rather than offering everything readymade on your plate. Most of all it doesn’t promote gossip (It cannot avoid it for sure). The credibility of an individual established through personal verification.
During the real-life off-line conversation, you can lower your guards and be on your own . Your loved ones do not judge you by your virtual-world presence. Your discussions stay personal and private within smaller groups and become public on social networking sites only when you or your group members wants to.
Future social networks are going to be more aligned with our real life. In my opinion, we’ll complete the circle and go back to our real life. In short, we’ll not have a virtual social network in future as it stands today.
Today we need social network because we need a place to share moments. Our thoughts, reactions, photos – everything needs a place where we can express ourselves. A social network is just a medium – an intermediary – which facilitates sharing. Future going to challenge the existence of this middle-man.
Future Possibilities
How about if our eye becomes a camera which can share the image without computers, screens or so-called social network. Or transferring what we see to the brains of our friends without the use of any form of existing social network. How about thinking in your own mother tongue and posting that thought to your friend’s brain in his/her mother tongue. How about relaying live video to your friend’s brain and showing them what you see. It is a hangout without Google Hangout.
In short, existing social networking sites going to take a shape of connected brains.
These connected brains are going to learn our relationship through our thoughts and behavior (machine learning 😜 ) and going to decide who should be receiving our messages. It will form a big chain of thoughts, messages, images and videos with inbuilt translators and filters. The chain itself is going to be so strong that we cannot alter the sequence of these thoughts (Blockchain ????).It will preserve our history with a big virtually connected brain network. We would be able to reconstruct the feelings and experience, by simply traversing through connected brains.
Is this really possible?
With the rapid speed on technology innovations, everything is possible. Remember, someone in some part of the world is always ahead of you. Here are the few links which support the thought process. By combining such tools and technique we should be able to transfer and store what we see, hear, touch and smell to others.
- Research article on plos.org about Brain to Brain communication
- Pranav Mistry: The thrilling potential of SixthSense technology
- Miguel Nicolelis: Brain-to-brain communication has arrived. How we did it