I am back to my geek space for a moment after busy week of massive literature search/review I am doing. So today - some science stuff for change.
First - something for Facebook freaks - a theory by Professor Robin Dunbar from Oxford Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology. The thing is about to get publish so I can't give you the full paper reference, but the idea goes like this: we have in the brain area called neocortex, responsible for processing complex thought and language (probably). However, the volume of neocortex is limited, and therefore we are only able to actively manage social circles of about 150 friends.
Social circle is defined by Dunbar as "relationships where a person knows how each friend relates to every other friend". Dunbar calculated this number when he surveyed such social circles as Neolithic farming villages, unit sizes in Roman armies and even non-primates groups. It seem that when the circles go larger than 150, then some part of links deteriorate and stagnate. Now, he is arguing that the same rule ('Dunbar number') works for online social groups like Facebook. He showed that you can have as much as 1000 friends, but you actively manage only about 150 of them anyway. There is a gender difference here: females communicate more via Facebook and manage their circles more than males (surprise?).
I am reluctant to agree, there are so many other factors that could determine our social circle management skills (e.g. personality traits like 'openness' or 'extraversion', level of anxiety). But I acknowledge the fact that we have a limited cognitive capacity which could effect managing our social circles. What do you think?
[image credit: Geek On Acid with shitty and broken camera]
I would distinguish between limits to our cognitive capacity or social prowess, and artificial limits set by software designers. One could argue that the friends you have in a social network don't use up that much space in our brains, if only because by definition we use software to remember and manage them. However, an unlimited number of friends could have very bad results from software performance standpoint.
ReplyDeleteThe number of possible connections in a network grows quadratically with the number of nodes (c = (n^2 - n)/2). Numbers grow even more quickly if you try to get to the third level of connections -- friends of your friends -- for example when trying to find those friends of your friends that you didn't befriend yet.
That's a good distinction, and what I thought about when you wrote it was - should we distinguish between virtual and real interactions? Are those different? If they are, than the problem is multiplied, because it some people might manage their virtual interactions differently than their real ones.
ReplyDeleteI like your equation, it absolutely makes sense. As you said, software will slow down when you have lot of connections, you will receive increasingly more information and updates from other users, you need to spend more time replying, refreshing profile, updating. Suddenly it becomes non-ecological to manage too many contacts, because it takes too much time. Certainly, it depends on the interface, but I think that Facebook goes in a bad direction, regarding such issue. They overload you with crap noise, like games or quiz-style services, so suddenly your social profile space becomes messy, overloaded. Well, at least that’s my impression. I know that many users love Facebook just for the sake of this ‘which actor has the same size of dick as you?’ type of quizzes. I personally would like to have an option (and for example pay a small fee every month) to be able to have a clear and nice profile with configurable widgets and smart search for different kind of information, user and content related. I hope that they will develop such service in a while.
As for distinguishing between "real" and virtual interactions -- is talking via the phone real? How about via intercom? Trough a sheet of slightly dimmed glass? What about in low visibility and high noise environment? I think it makes more sense to talk about communication in terms of bandwidth and capabilities.
ReplyDeleteBandwidth describes how much you can communicate -- texting has very little bandwidth, chatting via IM has a bit more, a phone conversation has more still, and I don't think anything can beat talking in person. Capabilities describe what types of information can be transfered, such as images, or sounds -- for example, emotions are often represented visually, with facial expressions and other body language.
As for all the Facebook games and doodads -- you can block some of that stuff (like notices from certain applications), and the rest is, well, your friends and what they're interested in :) People use FB to share what we find interesting, or important, or funny, and while in some cases you may not share the interest, this _is_ what your friends like, you misanthrope ;)
Hahaha misanthrope? If I don't like Lady Gaga, and my friends do, you will call me that too?;-)
ReplyDeleteOk bandwidth is indeed very good indicator of communcation, better than virtual and real... Indeed, bandwidth focuses on cognitive complexity of information stream, while virtual/real distinction is too arbitrary for classification.
I really like the way you re-define some concepts Pies, you should think about writting a book (or better e-book) about cognitive cyberpsychology, I could be your editor ;-)
I hear there's no money in writing books, sorry. But I'll be more than happy to help you edit yours :)
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