Friends, followers, connections and the rest
In the last few days a lot has been written about the British anthropologist Robin Dunbar. In 1992 he found out that the human brain couldn't handle more than 150 stable social relationships, hence the name 'Dunbar 150'. Dunbar stated that the number 150 applies to 'communities with a very high incentive to stay together' and that social grooming would take up a large part of that group's time.
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.
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.