Peak Social
Discussion
We Have Hit Peak Social
George Siemens:
"Dunbar and Shultz argue that significant human evolution in intelligence occurred due to the “computational demands of living in large, complex societies that selected for large brains”. Similarly, Mesoudi, Whiten, & Dunbar’s research states that social information receives preference for cultural transmission.
If this hypothesis holds true, then humanity has gained astounding intelligence benefits because of social complexity.
But.
Humanity has hit Peak Social – the point at which we can gain no new evolutionary or developmental intellectual advantage from social activity.
Perhaps the most fundamental human trait, after fulfilling biological needs of food, shelter, and procreation, is the desire to impose order on and make sense of the world. We have, historically, activated social attributes in order to manage information complexity. Language is social (Wittgenstein and Vygotsky both attribute the value of language in giving birth to thought). Artifacts – paintings, sculpture, and videos – are simultaneously an expression of individual understanding and a means to enact social and participatory sensemaking.
I believe that humanity’s sensemaking is dominant and social is recessive, activated primarily to serve sensemaking and wayfinding goals and activities. My colleague at Athabasca, Jon Dron, prefers the less radical view that the social is a necessary and sufficient condition for sensemaking. Regardless of ones preferred view, there is an obvious relationship between our capacity to make sense of the world and the need for social networks and systems to do so.
Early information overload indicates a departure from social means of learning and sensemaking. Several hundred years ago (if we set aside geographic constraints of language and libraries, it was several thousand years), humanity crossed a threshold where what was known by humanity could no longer be known by a single person. To combat this deficiency, methods and techniques like indexes and encyclopedias were developed. The thing that pointed to another thing had to grow in encompassing scope. An article in Diderot’s encyclopedia came to stand for a book. Sensemaking broke from social boundaries and moved into the domain of non-human devices.
The development of the telegraph, telephone, and eventually the internet amplified and joined communication and information systems. Suddenly, what was communicated was no longer about information only, but was itself information – captured, stored, and analyzable in a database.
And it is here that we hit peak social. We’ve clustered and sub-clustered our social relations. We’ve fragmented our information sources down to tweets and status updates. A tweet now points to a revolution in the Middle East. Or the IMF chief’s actions in New York. While social is lovely, warm, comfortable, human, we need to start thinking about what’s next in human development. While social will be a huge part of it, it must give way to methods that contribute to, rather than cluster, reduce, sub-network, and silo, sensemaking capacity.
Sensors now automatically collect data in the absence of human involvement. Increase in computing power and data quantity promise alternative models of science. Information is no longer something humans seek – it is now starting to seek us.
The next evolutionary surge for humanity will be driven by increased reliance on automated systems for information capture and analysis. The infrastructure – the internet and mobile technologies – is already in place. The data being generated is poorly analyzed by individuals (numerous companies are rather eager to do it, but those pesky privacy laws are a problem)." (http://www.connectivism.ca/?p=317)