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Algorithms and Geography

Over the past few days, we've been trying to demonstrate how powerful the online community is; We are convinced that the exchange of information and constant human interaction is all that it will take to make the world truly democratic. And from the picture above (as well as the video we posted yesterday) we observe the significance of human online networks.

And since the more connected people are, the more they interact - it feels like change, freedom and empowerment could well be around the corner.

Remember the time when the trend was to depict the planet by showing our light energy consumption - you could actually see whole countries only by taking a picture in the dark! I presume you can still do. Even more so, now. Well, the above map of the world, drawn by Facebook data structuring intern Paul Butler using connections between 10 million Facebook friends, is interesting enough in itself until you realize that all of the country borders are entirely drawn using Facebook friend connections too. Even if the world was dark and totally unmapped, Facebook could produce a remarkably good approximation of most of its continents’ boundaries, and even the borders of some countries.

Note the lack of definition in China and Russia, and the relative hole in Brazil. These countries are among the world’s last holdouts in having dominant social networking sites other than Facebook. (QZone, VKontakte, and Orkut, respectively.)

What we find interesting is that the picture suggests (quite naturally) that nations and borders still yield considerable influence on the direction of social interactions. Since we have evolved in a system where Nation-states are the norm, geographical borders will naturally tend to shape our social boundaries too. Hence, individuals will naturally be more inclined to communicate with those who speak the same language, or those who are located in proximity to their cultural heritage, or everyday reality.

But as the world evolves, and as globalisation unravels, at the pace at which currently is (exponentially), will humans continue to be constrained by such Napoleonian inheritances like language, geographical borders or culture? I think not. What relevance would armies, states, governments have in such a world of information and communication?

We don't think that the reality which we speak about is that far away. In fact, it really feels that we're almost there.

2.0 | empowerment | Internet | Social Media