the human network

I

The world is changing. We have wired ourselves up – and now unwired ourselves, stewing in a perpetual bath of radio waves – so that we are always connected. A billion of us keep our mobile phones constantly at hand, while 700 million of us use the Internet. This isn’t just a game of numbers, of huge populations growing ever larger; it isn’t that more is better, but rather, more is different. A billion people using mobile phones means that those phones will have an impact beyond anything that could be predicted. What we see – what we’re learning, right now – is that this age of “hyperconnectivity” has produced emergent effects. We did not know of this world until it grew up around us.

And yet, for all that, it is of us. This may be a new age, but it is still very much a human era. The bonds of hyperconnectivity have created a space for a new form of culture to flourish. We have learned that we can share what we know with each other, and that this is so far beyond what can be found in any book – or even any library – that it constitutes a new form of knowledge, something we hadn’t even suspected existed. We can take the choicest bits that each of us has come to master throughout our lives, and make of them a common cause, creating something beyond the work of any one person, or even any group of people. This global knowledge, as exemplified by Wikipedia, has changed our relationship to knowing. Consider: all we need to do for Wikipedia to work is to share what we know. Just by performing that one simple task, we can amplify our own expertise so that everyone, everywhere has access to it, and can benefit from it. Experts no longer sit perched atop the ivory towers of foreboding institutions; we can type and click and learn as much as we care to know about almost anything anyone, anywhere has ever learned.

Hyperconnectivity is amplifying our capabilities. We are no longer trapped by ignorance: we can know, and therefore we can know how to act. The acceleration of culture which began in the 20th century is kicking into hyperspeed, as the high-octane fuel of global knowledge reaches every person on the planet. It is as though each of us carries around with us the brains of all of the rest of homo sapiens; the simplest to the smartest, all of us share in this new abundance of knowing. But this is not all; in fact, this is only the beginning.

II

We can share what we know, but – perhaps more importantly – we can share what we create. Our networks have become finely-tuned systems for “hyperdistribution” – techniques which allow any person, anywhere, to reach everyone, everywhere with their vision: their thoughts, their dreams, their voice. We have each become our own television networks, radio stations, and newspaper publishers. Each of us has the same capability of reaching everyone else, a power that, just a decade ago, belonged only to the very richest and most powerful among us. And we’re putting this capability to work. Individuals are creating media – in their own homes – which millions of people read, or watch, or listen to. There are no barriers, anywhere; even in the most tyrannical states, even where the police sneak and snoop and tap, the message gets out – because anywhere the network touches us with hyperconnectivity, there we are open to the world. Try as they might, no government, no corporation, and no culture can shut that down, save by pulling the plug.

All of this means that we’ve got more demands on our attention than ever before. Where, just a decade ago, we had a handful of media to select from, we now have to choose from a nearly infinite and constantly-expanding supply of different views, produced across the street or on the other side of the world. This is the greatest challenge of the age of hyperconnectivity – how do we keep from drowning in this raging sea of possibilities? How do we know what to watch, or read, or listen to? The answer is simpler than it might seem: we listen to the voices we trust. Trust is earned, the product of experience and expectation. We trust our friends, we trust our family, and our friends and family are connected, by these same invisible bonds of hyperconnectivity, to others whom they trust, who are, in turn, connected to others they trust, and so on. The world in the era of hyperconnectivity is threaded with these bonds of trust, and these bonds have become the new networks. You find something of value, and forward it along to your family and friends, who will read it because you have recommended it. Each of us are already doing this, as we surf the web, and read our electronic mail. Each of us are already fully engaged in this emergent “hyperculture,” though we don’t think of it as anything special – it’s just what we do.

III

In this way, a new world has emerged around us: containing us, sustaining us, and turning us into something new, something unprecedented. We no longer think individually, or alone, but, in a very gentle yet wholly pervasive connectivity, we have come to share with one another matters of importance, both trivial and vital. It is not that we are of one mind – far from it – but rather that we are working collectively toward a common goal: understanding. Knowledge is not enough; rather, we are putting that knowledge to work, sharing what we’ve learned, transforming knowledge into understanding. We are becoming more effective, less fettered by our ignorance, and more authentically ourselves. With this new understanding, we can comprehend the situation that confronts us: we are at the threshold of an entirely new era, where a new form of communication – beyond any one of us, yet embracing all of us – has transformed us into hyperpeople.

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 7th, 2006 at 2:04 pm and is filed under GPRS, GSM, Internet, Wikipedia, digital social networks, filtering, finding, forwarding, hyperpeople, media, mobile, peer production, social networks, three fs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.