Over the past couple weeks I’ve been trying out a new geo-social networking tool called BrightKite. They call themselves a “location based social network” which basically means that they encourage users to check-in (using the web or SMS) to various physical locations, and to then broadcast that location to other users. One of my friends on Twitter (a very interesting micro-blogging community) asked why anyone would care where someone else is, and what the point of these kind of networks are. A good question, but one that is definitely uninformed about the larger purpose of geo-social networking.
Being able to alert people to your location really isn’t all that useful, unless you are nearby to another person, and a social interaction becomes possible. The real purpose of these networks is to actually enable real-world connections by digitally mapping a person’s whereabouts and comparing them to others. Instead of having to call people to tell them where you are (how antiquated!), you instead just have your geo-spatial location tracked, and have your friends become alerted to this location in real-time. In essence, these services will allow us to unify our virtual and meatspace connections, thereby enhancing both! ((You can of course choose to not have your location broadcast. When the technology becomes more mature the only choice you’ll likely be making is whether to be “on the radar” or “off the grid”. Most everything else will be handled automatically for you.))
Differentiate…
But why hasn’t this already happened? Most of the social networks you belong to today happen exclusively online. Facebook, Myspace, etc. allow you to connect with people you don’t know, who may share interests with you or even a common background, but they certainly don’t promote—except in rare instances—actual physical connections. ((Online dating services like Match.com are definitely an exception. Just wait until they start harnessing geo-social networking technologies! You’ll be standing at the corner of Pearl and 14th and will suddenly be receiving a date request over your cell phone from the woman across the street—and neither of you may have initiated the date! Blind dating on steroids.)) This has created, what many critics have pointed out as, a disconnected relationship to the physical world, not an enhanced one. But that is really only half the story, the 1st half of differentiation.
Just as a new cell must differentiate itself from an old one while replicating, so too has the internet differentiated itself from normal ways of worldly communication. And just as computers are vastly superior to the human brain at certain types of computation, and are becoming more so each day with the continued development of artificial intelligence, the internet allows world-wide collective communication at far greater speeds and with far greater collaborative potential. What is web 2.0 if not a greater tapping of the internet’s global communication potential?
…then Integrate
The 2nd half of the story is one of integration, of coming together, of unifying at higher and more complex levels. We are seeing the beginnings of internet technologies that are beginning to reach back into our physical lives, to bring the stupendous benefits of lightening-quick, highly collaborative, data-rich systems back into social lives.
The result, eventually, will be geo-social networks that track where we are (instead of us having to do so manually) will notify us not only of pre-existing friends that are close, but also of people we might like to meet based on a set of shared interests, friendships, and passions. We’ll begin to be able to meet people that we didn’t even know we wanted to meet. That’s human relationships 2.0—to extend the 2.0 metaphor farther then I probably should.
All new technologies begin as crude and slightly disconnected from the rest of their environments. We can think back only a couple of decades to massive mainframe computers and big brick-like cellphones that almost no one used. The internet, and the social networks that we find on it today are kind of like that. But with geo-social networking on the rise, and a host of other useful, more fully integrated information technologies, we are going to find out lives more deeply enriched by these things, not less so. In the end their integration will become so tight, as it already has become for many in my generation, that we really won’t be able to distinguish any difference between the virtual world and the real world. It will just be the world that we interact, love, work, and play in.
