Social Media in Reggie’s Realm®- How did it happen when we were not watching?

SOCIAL MEDIA IN REGGIE’S REALM®

HOW DID IT HAPPEN WHEN WE WERE NOT WATCHING!

I am 75 years old. I like to think that I pay attention. I write a lot and read even further. I

journey out describing our landforms, and journey within exploring that which I’m  feeling.

What I missed seemed to have happened so quickly. And it happened in a space newly

created. A vibrant new world not really out there, and not normally experienced within your thinking.

Maybe it is some kind of made-up  cultural living thing?

It started out strangely, for that part I remember. It was 2004 and both of my sons

were attending eastern colleges.

When they arrived, they were given a “Face Book,” identifying their classmates. The

sudden expansion of such an innocent concept seemed to me to involve a surprising

surrender of privacy. But that was just the beginning.

Not just a beginning, really, more of an explosion of what had already been growing.

The development of vigorous algorithms to digest more personal information and hunt for

new opportunities to control users’ attention.

Thus began the extraordinary dissection of our social structure. And when combined

with the unexpected power of the “short form video” (who would have thought those usually

contentless blubberings,  would become so economically ingratiating!) and joined with “trending

music” (catchy ear worms, digging into your feelings!), Social Media has now created a future

that never really existed. One ably described in the book, Algospeak, by Adam Aleksic. Much of what

follows is defined by that 2025 work of historical linguistics. But much

else can be gleamed from Growing, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language, by Robin Dunbar

[1996], and The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins [1976]. All three will be discussed further.

But here is some of what I initially learned from those stimulating books and other

sources of learning.

Gossip!

That’s our power. Human power. That’s how we happened. That’s how we survived

and killed all the others. Why we are the only species of humans left now to follow.

Working together, we mated with some and exterminated the others. Individually,

the Neanderthals [Homo neanderthalensis ] were bigger-brained and stronger. They should

have been able to take us. They just didn’t work well enough together. Didn’t know how to

do so. Maybe they thought gossip was improper.

It’s just that gossip, however rude, allows you to know more about more people. More

people to work with, even if you never knew them. You can learn about others through the

gossip of those closest to you. Effective groupings of as many as 150 humans can form this

way. And that can mean more powerful action in unison.

Gossip was the earliest form of social media. It started a cultural revolution even that

far back when!

That is the thesis by Robin Dunbar, an English biological anthropologist who

described his thinking in the book, Grooming, Gossip and the Evolution of Language [1996].

Before our human ability to talk about others, group bonding was established by “grooming.”

Actual conveyance of friendship by feeling. Chimpanzees can organize about 35 supporters

that way. But you’ve got to be present, talking and touching. Not very efficient in building

armies.

So what else has happened since we started? Well, the ability to express ourselves by

speaking seemed to accelerate about 70,000 years ago. And the change was not just physical,

a change in the vocal chords. Something else had happened upstairs. Imaginative thought

expanded, as did the word sounds and symbols to describe it.

Mesopotamian cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphics followed later, and the race was

on to communicate with even broader audiences with written down systems. Different

methods, including those using sophisticated pictographic representations also developed [Chinese, for

example]. Then those symbols and pictures became truncated and used to express

something different [the Rebus Principle], and, finally, developed into the widely used

“alphabet” we seem so proud of. Mythology could then be spread widely as writing, affixing

permanency to thinking, and allowing the enforcement of conformity through an even larger

group of humans gathered.

The impact of Gutenberg and his printing press in 1440 is well known. Books could

suddenly move through a more public marketplace and not be restricted to Monk copied

manuscripts, hidden in dusty old monasteries, or carvings on rock monuments. Books would

spark a revolution in America. But books travel relatively slowly if only carried by horses,

boats, and, later, steam engines.

It can be reasonably assumed that the first instantaneous transmission of information

over long distances, the first “Internet,” was the telegraph [see The Victorian Internet by

Tom Standage, 1998]. Based on dots and dashes [Morse Code], it foreshadowed the basis for

our modern digital computing. Two variables in a single position. Primitive, really, but still

the basis of our computing systems.

Vast populations were suddenly, almost magically, seemingly speaking together

immediately over the telegraph. Even if stock prices and where to send troops seemed to

dominate the conversation!

The telephone was in service in New Haven, Connecticut by 1878. Varying electrical

impulses moved diaphragms, reproducing similar movement and sounds on the other end

of a copper wire. This then led to facsimile telecopy transmission of data.

Radio was next, manipulating amplitude modulation [AM] and frequency modulation

[FM] to communicate without physical connection. Stunning! By 1907, the Eifel Tower

began broadcasting wireless signals [and helped save that historic monument!].

Television must have appeared as a miraculous apparition when it first spread over

the 1950’s public airwaves. It was developed by varying very high frequency analog waves

[VHF] and ultra-high frequency [UHF] radio wave signals.

The modern “Internet” was first constructed by the United States Military’s

“Advanced Research Projects Agency Network” [ARPANET] in 1969 to operate without a

vulnerable central location. Packet switching networks of “Transmission Control and

Internet Protocols” [TCIP], were incorporated in 1974. Public access to a “World Wide Web”

began with the use of the “Hypertext Transfer Protocol” [HTTP] in 1993. Then we really got

cooking. Hyperlinks and groovy pictures!

What happened next, is described in the next installment of “Social Media” in Reggie’s

Realm®. Keep tuning in!

 

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