Google’s in the House!

In my last post, “It Googles the Mind“, I talked about the digital breadcrumbs that we leave behind when we use social networks and online tools. These breadcrumbs can now be found through search. Our use of Google was once limited to searching the web; now we can use it to remember. At the end of the post I asked, “I wonder where else this will lead?”.

Today I just thought I would share this funny video for your entertainment. It’s out there, but maybe it will also stretch your imagination. Google’s in the house!

January 28th, 2008 - Posted in Social Media | | 0 Comments

It Googles the Mind

Human memory still boggles my mind, if I can say it that way. I remember from my University days working on projects like image recognition & computer vision. It seemed amazing to me that the function of human memory and computer memory were opposite extremes. If I give you twenty numbers to remember right now, you might be able to retain seven of them where a computer can store, recall, and process billions of records with ease. It is not even close. However, when it comes to recognizing a face, or a voice, we do it seemingly “without thinking” and this is very difficult for computers.

I remember an experience I had a few years ago. I was on a business trip heading to Europe and I had to stay overnight at London Heathrow and take my connecting flight the next morning. After I landed, I went through customs, picked up my bags and advanced toward ground transportation to find the courtesy bus for my hotel. It was late evening; I was tired and ready for bed. Then in the middle of the busy Heathrow crowd flowing toward the buses, my mind focuses on one seemingly random person off in the distance, headed away from me. All I could see was this person’s gate and relative height to those around him. A thought then pops in my mind which I immediately dismiss, “that looks like Derrick” (a colleague of mine). I dismiss it for good reason. I’m in a busy London airport with thousands of people – what are the chances? I’m from Canada and he works in the Netherlands. Plus he is too far away and I couldn’t possibly recognize him solely from his manner of walking. The thought wanders off.

I eventually find the right bus, get on, and of course I see my colleague sitting on the same bus going to the same hotel! So out of billions of people in the word, in a place where I would least expect it, my mind is able to recognize a person’s walking pattern that I was not looking for and alert me that I have seen this pattern before. Amazing.

Of course, as I write this, I can’t even recall which country I was heading to or who I was going to meet. I can, however, search my online calendar to recover that information. In fact a lot of my “memory” is now searchable online. As an experiment, try to remember where you were exactly three months ago on the evening of October 22, 2007. I was at a PRSA Technology Summit dinner in Philadelphia at the Cuba Libre Restaurant and Rum BarI. No, I did not answer that question from memory. I used search.

As we leave our digital breadcrumbs behind through our increasing use of online tools, we are finding that more and more of our “memories” are stored on servers. At one time our use of Google was limited to searching the web. Now we can use it to remember! I use Google Desktop for this all the time. Perhaps in the future there will be digital archaeologists doing “digital digs”, uncovering rare online media to piece together what happened in our time?! (I checked Wikipedia for digital archaeologist; it’s not there yet). And now with Social Media, we not only have the basic images and words stored, but we also have the conversational dynamics and the social graph. We can recreate who said it first, how it propagated, who made it popular, etc.

I wonder where else this will lead? It simply Googles the Mind.

January 23rd, 2008 - Posted in Online Media, Social Media | | 3 Comments

Social Media Hummingbirds and Online Conversations

Everyone likes to see hummingbirds. They immediately capture our attention but they only stay for mere seconds. By the time someone says, “Look! A hummingbird”, it is gone.

Did you know that hummingbirds will typically consume more than their own weight in food daily? In order to pull this off they have to visit hundreds of flowers each day. They are at a constant risk of starving. No wonder they don’t stop.

Earlier today, Brian Solis wrote about “The Online Value of Conversations” where he notes an increase in the volume and frequency of new content being generated often at the expense of the high value conversation surrounding a topic which he calls, “the most enlightening part of any topic” where you find, “brilliance, perspective, and new opinions that allow a topic to genuinely flourish”. He makes a lot of sense. Like a hummingbird, we take a quick bite (a media snack) and then move on to the next topic rather than engage. Is it a volume problem or perhaps, as Steve Rubel points out, the Lazysphere has produced an increase in regurgitated content not worth stopping for?

The part of Brian’s post that brought the Hummingbird image to mind is:

“Again, content is increasing in production to the point where it’s almost impossible to navigate through the static. Instead of honing on and strengthening relevant signals, we jump from place to place and from conversation to conversation, contributing most of our time to sharing less important content than the very ideas that can help empower the value of each online community where we engage.
We move too quickly.”

In thinking about this trend, I wondered if it might be contributing to new habits that will overflow to all of our conversations & relationships (offline and online)? In other words, could our media snacking habit be shifting our relationships and conversations to increasingly becoming wider, but more superficial instead of focused and deep? Or do you find rather that it opens doors to great relationships?

Personally I think it is all quite manageable as long as you keep a proper balance, as my “social media addict” colleague & friend has recently written about. However, I am inspired by Brian’s post to try to stop and engage a little more often. Are you a social media hummingbird?

January 17th, 2008 - Posted in Conversation, Social Media | | 4 Comments

A Social Media Memorial to the Boys in Red

Can social media help us to genuinely reach out when tragedy strikes outside of our local community?

There was a funeral today in a hockey arena. On January 12 2008, seven players from the Bathurst High School Phantoms basketball team died in a tragic accident. Their van lost control while driving back from a game. Only three passengers and the driver, coach, survived. His wife did not.

Their community has suffered a great loss. When I heard about this, my heart went out to those families. I have teenage children too. I have often driven back from games or tournaments through challenging weather. But how can I reach out?

Local friends have set up an online memorial to the “Boys in Red” where you can at least leave your thoughts, prayers and words of encouragement. As of this writing there are over 23,600 people who have joined the Facebook group set up in their honour. There are pictures, videos and mostly words of encouragement. Another 4,900 have left comments on the online guest book.

“Pleasant words are like honey,
sweet to the soul and healing to the bones.” (Solomon)

You can send your words here or here.

January 17th, 2008 - Posted in Community, Social Media | | 0 Comments

A Frog in the Social Media Kettle

They say that if you put a frog in a kettle of boiling water that it will sense the danger and jump out. But, if you put a frog in a kettle filled with water at room temperature, the frog will be comfortably at ease. Then, if you gradually bring the kettle to a boil, the frog will not notice the gradual change until it is too late.

Gradual change is difficult to notice, even if that change is ultimately significant. I can just imagine the conversation between a couple of frogs in the kettle:

Frog 1: “Do you think it is getting hot in here?”

Frog 2: “Maybe a little. I don’t mind. And, I’m sure it will cool down again in the morning. I’ve seen this before; back in 1999, it got really warm. I’m too busy to worry about it anyway.”

Frog 1: “I think it is getting really hot!”

Frog 2: “No, it is just warm.”

At what point exactly does warm become hot? When do a few grains of sand become a heap? Greek philosopher Eubulides, a contemporary of Aristotle, posed this question in the Sorites Paradox. He argued,

“A single grain of sand is certainly not a heap. Nor is the addition of a single grain of sand enough to transform a non-heap into a heap: when we have a collection of grains of sand that is not a heap, then adding but one single grain will not create a heap. And yet we know that at some point we will have a heap.”

Is Social Media a heap yet? Does this heap reach the point where we will look back and call it a cultural revolution? Is social media driving major changes in culture, the economy, ideology even?

I think it is, and that is the question I want to explore with with this blog. Thanks for dropping by and please subscribe if you like this topic. What do you think?

January 15th, 2008 - Posted in Social Media | | 8 Comments