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Think about it for a moment: Where do you sit most of the time and with whom?

- in an office chair in a private office
- in an office chair in a cube farm
- in meetings
- alone in a car
- in a car with others
- on your bike
- in public transit
- alone on a sofa
- on a sofa with friends
- on the floor
- in your bath
- in church
- alone in a movie theater/concert/opera house/stadium etc.
- in a movie theater/concert/opera house/stadium etc. with friends
- in front of a computer
- on the fence (hopefully not very often)
- alone at the dining table at home or in a restaurant
- at the dining table with friends at home or in a restaurant

Actually we spend a lot of time sitting, but that's not what I'm getting at.

It's the last example mentioned above: The dining table.

The dining table used to be a central point for social interaction – especially, but not only, for families. A great place to eat, drink, discuss and have a good time. A great place to 'decelerate'.

Do you still do that often? Or do you prefer fast food on the go or in front of your computer. Even worse, is your computer placed on your dining table? Do you have a dining table? What have you planned for dinner this evening? 

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Mother: "It's time to go home"
Child: "Why"
Mother: "Because it's getting late"
Child: "Why"
Mother: "It's time to eat"
Child: "I'm not hungry"
Mother: "You have to eat"
Child: "Why"
Mother: "To stay healthy and to grow up"
Child: "I don't want to grow up"
Mother: "All children grow up"
Child: "Why"
Mother (slightly exhausted): "Because that is the way it is"
Child: "Why"
Mother (still exhausted): "That's enough, let's go"
Child: "I don't want to go"

Sound familiar?

The conversation continued and I must admit to feeling sorry for the mother. But that is the way kids are. They are curious, want to know and understand.They don't feel stupid asking and are not trying to pick their mother's answers to pieces either.

According to Wikipedia, asking "why" is the request for an evidential reason. It is a great way to check the validity of an argument.

When is the last time you asked "why"?

I have the impression that many grown-ups do everything to avoid asking that question, especially when at work. Are we afraid to look stupid? Don't we consider it to be acceptable? Do we believe that asking the boss "why" implicitly means that we don't believe what he or she is saying? Does it imply lack of trust?

Speculation thrives in such an environment: "the boss could have meant", "what the boss really wants", "what the boss was trying to get across" and the list goes on. Where speculation thrives, mistakes happen. After all, if we don't know what the boss wants, we're not going to do what's expected of us.

Kids learn by asking "why", but so do we. Asking "why" not only leads to better decisions, it also questions the status quo, thereby enabling innovation and change. As Warren Bennis says "The manager asks how and when, the leader asks what and WHY".

Why don't we want to lead?

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How does that correlate with the fact that some of us have thousands of so-called 'friends' and 'followers' in the popular networks? It has a lot to do with nomenclature: Are these people really our 'friends'? Some of them hopefully are, but most of them are not.

What is a friend? A long time ago Plutarch said 'I don't need a friend who changes when I change and who nods when I nod; my shadow does that much better' and Oscar Wilde, in his own inimitable way, said 'true friends stab you in the front' True friendship involves esteem, affection, respect and honesty. It means doing things together and sharing thoughts and feelings. True friendship includes altruism and is reciprocal. We recognize our true friends when we really need them. True friendship leads to trust.

Relationships are the basis of a society. Therefore unstable relationships destabilize a society, which incidentally is exactly what is happening today. We have been led to believe in the power of size: The more fans a team has, the more relevant it is. The more employees a manager in a typical corporation has, the more important he is. Now we start to realize that this principle is not working anymore. This also applies to networks. As I've stated before, I believe many small, individual 'niche' networks to be superior to one monopolistic 'Über'-network.

We know from research that only 25% of us trust advertising (other survey even suggest less than 20%). We also know that we are more inclined to trust recommendations of fellow consumers that have bought the same product or service. But the amount of 'friends' or 'followers' that that fellow consumer has, is not necessarily an indication of his or her trustworthiness.

The 'Dunbar 150' still holds, because Moore's Law does not apply to the human brain. Algorithms don't have friends and they don't make friends either.

Let us invest more time thinking about why we do the things we do, about our desires and wishes. Let us invest more time to develop true, personal, meaningful relationships. Technology can be a great tool to support our goals. However we should not rely on technology to do the job for us. That would be the first step into redundancy.

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In many countries lobbying, which aims to influence decisions by the government (i.e. elected representatives of the people), is on the rise. More and more political parties are being accused of client politics. Lobbying is effectively political advertising.

Classical advertising on the other hand, is a paid message meant to persuade its viewers/readers/listeners, i.e. people, about a particular point-of-view or to do something.

Lobbyist and advertiser are often the same. The same corporation, which aims to influence governmental decisions to facilitate business and ultimately increase profits through lobbying, uses advertising to influence consumer decisions in their favor, thereby increasing profits as well.

That sounds like 'lobbycracy' and not like 'power to the people' to me. Am I being too sarcastic?

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I have written about the meaning and implications of 'social' before and I will continue to do so, because I believe it to be a fundamental issue that so far is not getting the attention it deserves. Just look at the never ending debates about Facebook's privacy policies.

Let's face it. Facebook and the other networks are nothing more (and nothing less) than very smart programs, systems of communication that allow their users to express themselves and exchange ideas as well as information. The networks are NOT social, because they are not human beings. The people that run the networks and their users can be social, but not the communication systems themselves.

Let's look at Facebook for a moment. It can not redefine social norms, as has been suggested recently. However I do believe that its owners are trying to do so and that is an important difference. From an economic perspective, the people that run Facebook are acting very rationally: The less privacy there is, the more they know about their users. The more they know about their users, the higher the price that they can fetch for those users, when renting them to the advertising industry. After all, how else are they going to make a profit? Sounds familiar, doesn't it? It should, because that's exactly what traditional media was and is doing.

Whether or not the owners of Facebook are going to be successful, depends on us, i.e. users. If we disapprove, we are free to leave Facebook. Facebook depends more on us than we do on them for the time being. I personally would prefer to see many more 'smaller' networks, catering to very specific needs. Diversity with Facebook as one of many networks is for the public good, a Facebook monopoly is not.

Rather than focusing on the tools we use, we should take the time to think a bit more about why we do what we do, as this will raise our awareness for the social implications of our behavior.

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Brands also spend a lot of time, money and sometimes creativity to find the right name. It is important as it influences awareness, aspirational as well as brand values. The results are sometimes tragic, especially in the age of globalization. One of many examples is the Irish liqueur 'Irish Mist'. In German 'Mist' means 'dung', 'garbage'

But the power of nomenclature strikes elsewhere as well, in words that we see and use daily without thinking about the real meaning. One example that struck me today is the 'Value Added Tax'. The value added tax, expressed in a percentage of the price of a product, is a major source of state income. It makes products more expensive for the consumer, but most certainly doesn't add value to them. The nomenclature is manipulating the consumer in a very subtle way. It is also interesting to note that in Germany the value added tax is 7% for dog food and 19% for baby food, but that is a different story.

There must be many more examples of subtle manipulation like this. Thinking about and analyzing the words, especially the descriptive terms, we use can be quite enlightening.

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Consumer Electronics have certainly come a long way. It is fascinating to see what technology is capable of. We can receive hundreds of programs via satellite or cable on bigger and bigger screens. One of the latest examples is the 3D plasma TV presented at the CES. Often I ask myself, how much value this piece of technology really adds with the present state of TV programming. After all a 3D plasma TV doesn’t transform a lousy program into a fantastic program. However it is probably fantastic for aquarium, fish tank or fireplace DVD’s and some people would also consider it to be a beautiful modern design object. None of which are reasons to buy a TV, or are they?

Many broadcasting stations prefer to copy successful programs in order to maximize short term profits. I wish producers would invest more time and budget in quality content. Unfortunately technological overkill with a trivial storyline is becoming the norm, rather than being the exception. The regular excuse is that what is being aired is what people want to see (and what is being watched brings in the advertising revenues). I don’t buy that. There are those that stop watching TV. There are those that spend their time desperately zapping from one channel to the other. There are those that consume TV without enjoying what they are seeing. And there are some that actually like what they see.

Are public or private broadcasting stations still appropriate in today’s environment or isn’t it time to think about new business models in the age of the Internet? Look at what the iPod in combination with individualized quality content via iTunes did to the big record labels. Consider the success of the iPhone in combination with the individualized quality content via the App Store.

And yes, Casablanca with Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman in B&W still is fantastic

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