A Researcher Makes Social Media More Scientific
February 20, 2014
The article titled Can Social Technologies Increase Our Dunbar Limit? on Lithosphere is a continuation of a scientific approach to social media behavior. The earlier articles by Michael Wu, the author and Chief Scientist at Lithium Technologies, are The Relativity and Economics of Relationship and Where is the New Dunbar Limit? (Wu begins this article with the cautious suggestions of skimming the others prior to diving in.) Dunbar’s number, for those unfamiliar, is the number of people with whom one can form and maintain a social relationship (and the suggested number is about 150.) In the article, Wu grapples with the possibility that social media may enable this number to increase (largely due to technologies making our ability to socialize more “efficient”. The article states,
“Although the internet has made communication more efficient in many ways, it is also limiting in other ways. The internet cannot transmit many nonverbal signals (e.g. touch, scents, physical proximics, body languages, etc) that are often very important for relationship building… Since social technologies are not able to help us build relationships more efficiently, I must come to consensus with Prof. Dunbar that modern social technologies probably cannot increase our Dunbar limit any further.”
The article delves into a comparison of socializing and communicating, pointing out that these are very different concepts. It also provides a brief history of human socializing behaviors. Ultimately Wu concludes that socializing includes many non-verbal cues which technology cuts out. Hence the Dunbar number remaining static. The article is fascinating as a more scientific approach to social media.
Chelsea Kerwin, February 20, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
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