Essay Intent: To provide inspiration for app developers to promote greater social relational connection between people given our digital-physical landscape.
There appear to be two communication methods: the emotional-relational and the informational. The following essay addresses:
- potential points of tension between the two
- future socialization potentialities given smartphones and smartglasses
- relation of socialization to human needs
Mutual Context
Mutual context refers to known points of information between people. In certain industries or networking events, one might ask about who they already know in a place. This helps break the ice and reduce the unknowns and uncertainty at events.
However, in a large city structure with little or no shared context between individuals, it may be feasible to speed up communication by putting said information onto a list.
The natural1 process might involve asking somewhere where they’re from, who they know in an area, scrolling through each other’s social medias—but often this leads to many missed points of connection due to not finding a point of conversation.
This mutual context on the list may then be a form of digital handshake between people where they tap their phones to get to know each other better and quicker. They may also be able to see previous people that they tapped/are connected to, which brings up more points of relation and contact.
Mutual Context and smartglasses
As we walk around in a public plaza, starting conversations with random strangers would be strange and often unwelcome. But suppose many people were using some form of smart glasses or smart contact lens. They could then choose to share information about themselves, such as their network, what they need (perhaps they are selling some furniture, or are hiring, or are looking for a job).
In this way going out for a walk leads to greater community, socialization, and opportunity and as digital technologies get better even a city of millions may feel like one where many people are familiar. Others who have these smart glasses on are then able to perceive the other person’s context, and can then strike up a specific conversation instead of bumbling through numerous missed introductions. This digital-physical social world, I’m convinced, will be the new form of social relation in the coming decade. Not just smartglasses, but relating the topology of physical space and closeness to digital connection. “Social” media, itself characterized by scrolling timelines (now hijacked by algorithms), performative image curation, blurbs into digital nothingspace, or “meetup” events and “conferences” meant to scalp money from attendees with noninformative keynotes while keeping networking to a core group seems to me desperately outdated but one we’re stuck on for little better option.
Some may worry: doesn’t this create a sort of digital panopticon, surveilling and tracking everybody? My initial guesses tell me that as long as the social network is opt in, revealing information about people only if they choose to share it, the privacy risk is roughly similar to strangers at most snapping secret photos of people. It is consequential and deserves some more thought, and I would welcome such comments sharing their viewpoints.
There is much more software that can definitely be built this decade and the following one to improve how we communicate and get along with each other. The past decade and a half have been some of the most consequential in shifting from paper analog and state-driven broadcast to this networked social world we now live in and with the shifts it entailed, and now perhaps we are just getting our bearings to building something solid for the next few decades.
Mutual Context and smartphones
There largely should be a way for people to quickly connect on commonalities, values, and needs, rather than connection based on shared consumption factors such as videogames and movies. Smartphones will likely serve this medium, an app that combines creation, context, notification of other people’s recent activities like a timeline feed across all channels, and contacts all in a local area.
The beginning of those who figure out how to digitally coordinate people well across small numbers will then lead to the re-expansion of a digital-native organization. But this is presuming all in the meantime that smartphones themselves, roads, and other necesasry goods don’t fall into disrepair.
The question I ask myself is: will there ever be a centralized and unified state again? Or is the current mode of it silently running in the background managing the currency and finance and media normal, just as villagers never seeing the king or emperor in ancient times? Perhaps a mass mobilized and educated citizentry, though it certainly would lead to great productive effectiveness and globalization emanating from the area of its growth, is in some ways too difficult, and we are back to a historical norm of blob-like nation-states never quite being able to influence one another to the degree that they’d like. The equilibrium between growth and dissipation is hard to overcome. Currently it seems: people work, they pay taxes, they float in their own bubbles and not much else happens. In an age of the internet, public exhortion of sacrifice is difficult for those who do not physically see and feel the social and spiritual world for which they are asked to sacrifice for. This must mean that any future unicenter must coordinate more of its citizens rather than just working in the background if it wants to keep everything together.
What does this mean for the future of humans?
I largely believe there will be two camps regarding the preferred means of association between people. One may strongly lean into the informational: understanding systems, technologies, books, science, and other things deeply in detail. For me, I always felt like it was something I had to do in order to build the requisite knowledge to become employed or notable in such a power-law society. Yet I wonder if such things lead to diminishing returns: if somebody had enough assets and a stable family, would they really want to meet a stranger and discuss the nuances of manifold topology, curvature comb continuity, iPhone band model lines, or engine combustion types?
The majority of people likely care about the emotional-relational, which involves listening to others in a conversation, exercise sports and general fitness, hobbies such as woodworking, mechanical keyboards, or writing, and other such activities. Some separation between hobbies, which are done given surplus of one’s perception of their local life, and homeostatic activities, which may be considered a process of acquisition of resources up to one’s perception of how their local life should be, should be made. If someone’s homeostatic activities greatly exceed that of their local environment, people may describe this person as ambitious.
For young people who are in a stage of asset and relationship accumulation, it might be necessary to put the emotional-relational part on a backburner in order to acquire enough assets at all. Given that, perhaps the usage of technologies which enhance mutual context and connection among individuals should be marketed across society: it’s opt-in, so anyone can choose to use it or not, but perhaps it’ll soon become a load-bearing feature of our lives and how we socialize. It is a tragedy that we in our modern age have children and relationships so late, often with too little community and social wealth2 to support our needs despite the prevalence of monetary wealth after some period of accumulation in one’s late twenties and early thirties.
Though somewhat hard to imagine, there may already be existing humans who are moreso object transformers and already heavily prefer the informational side of human association. They may put little weight on reproductive activities for enjoyment or games of social hierarchy on everyday metrics such as going to sporting events or festivals. Yet these personality types in the modern environment also are somewhat penalized in reproductive proforthment in the next generation due to their rarity, along with such characteristics such as neuroticism, perfectionism, striverism. The low/medium-ambition and average ‘blob’ appears based on the author’s impression the most suited for reproduction in the modern world as those with requirements too high may hit unforeseen roadblocks. Perhaps as humans become more informational than emotional, those able to manage the reproductive urge except for periods of mating not unlike that of a tiger will find better focus in economic competition.
Nevertheless, I think humanity’s destiny as a space-faring civilization will not succeed without huge improvements in bio-health capital and educational systems, of which developing greater social capital through technology is an important part of. But the future is unknown: whether space-farers will look like technological masters or truckers is to be determined. Whether a human lineage which spends much type on transforming objects and information acquisition as opposed to social-emotional behavior would actually rapidly outcompete other cultures over time is also yet unknown, but I do see it already happening. I feel a great loss in seeing this heartwarming and emotional way of life and now being less able to relate. I see them as happy people reduced to hawking food in cities and stalls due to not changing with the times into this detached informational way of being. A society must retain some emotion if it is to care for those with needs; one based solely on interest and utilitarianism is one that sees child abandoning parent, student ignoring former teacher on the long road to seeming technological progress.
Footnotes
-
Regarding the word natural: some may argue pipes moving water is unnatural and we should be all drinking from streams. I merely state it as the current most commonplace method, but better methods await. ↩
-
Multiple people sharing a car or other assets can work well, so long as everyone communicates well and respects the tidiness of shared spaces. There’s a sort of optimal balance where the best amount of people owning something might be many, rather than just one or some. Many of us commute on highways quite lonesomely. ↩
Comments
No comments yet — be the first.