Diagramming the Evolution of Connections and Information Flow
I posted a diagram a few days ago showing some primitive circuits and I was going to use the diagram to show the evolution of information exchange on the internet. Information exchange really began when people started using the internet back in the late 1980s and up until the release of Yahoo’s directories. Gathering information was mainly done by searching and the activity of learning new information was an individual task. Socializing information on the internet hadn’t existed.
For this comparison, I’ll use the diagram to show what I mean by the evolution of information exchange. Column A will be used to show the complexity of online connections and Column B will be used to show the information flow across those connections.
1a accepts that connections between people exist, but clearly shows in 1b that information isn’t being shared between those connections. This disconnect is probably the main reason why social networks became popular. While Zuckerberg, Abrams, and Anderson might not have thought of this as the main reason for why their networks all flourished, it was clear that people were yearning for an easier way to exchange information. Google was a great way to find what you were looking for, but for the most part, people like having information pushed to them. An example is: “David uploaded 4 photos of himself skiing” or “Michael attached an article from the New York Times”. People are also more likely to take a look at information that is pushed to them because it is more trusted than randomly perusing content silos. In the early 2000s, information flow across the internet transformed towards 2b where information intersected other information and as in 2a, connections between people had substance on the internet — people became much more than just a buddy on your AIM contact list, thus the dot in 2a.
Now, where does information flow go from here? People are beginning to realize that having information pushed to them from their friends is good, but its not ideal. For the most part, friends have an agenda or simply don’t like the same things as their friends do. While funny videos are great, the real question is whether information flow is the most efficient through the social graph (your friends).
I really don’t think so. People have very specific preferences and as I described before, psychographic projections are multi-dimensional. The act of sharing items with friends is beginning to decline because people don’t really always like what their friends like. In fact, most people are embarassed to admit what they really like to read or like to watch. If we look at 3a, we can see that people are connected to a stream (the horizontal line) and from this horizontal line, they are connected to other people and to information. I call this the “line of preference”. From the line of preference, information flows to the right people based on their preferences, not by who they’re connected to. As metadata becomes more detailed, the flow of information can become more efficient, targeted, and relevant. 3b shows the information still intersects other information, but the distribtion of that information is more relevant to the people.
I know the correlation to the diagram is relatively absurd, but in academia, people have a tendency to do absurd things.