Minnesota, USA – November 23, 2011 – The physical world is not shrinking, but that could surprise us since the online world shows ‘connections’ as getting closer; specifically, Facebook announced that on average any two people are 4.74 connections apart –this is particularly astonishing since there’s 721 million users! Perhaps the ‘friend suggestion’ tool is helping out or we are meeting more people in person who happen to be connected to others –or a combination of both.
Perhaps you are one of the few who recently discovered that you have a mutual friend with someone and didn’t realize it before; this is not the situation where a friend adds someone on your list because he or she was suggested, but actually knows this friend. With the trend that Facebook is setting, this will likely happen even more often in the future. Maybe in the next several years, the connection gap will be only 2 friendships apart; this would mean that people all over the world are connecting even more –hopefully on the ‘real’ level as well.
The world becomes more connected as people join social networks like Facebook; of course not everyone is able to do this, but one day maybe it could be possible. If this is the case, it could teach users cultural sensitivity; in addition, it could simply be ‘fun’ for people of all ages to get to know others. Some may think that it will make the cultures become similar over time, which could be correct; but it could also bring people together to the point where they feel comfortable with communicating with other cultures.
If more people are writing on social networks, there is a written record of who, how, and how often people interacted. It could prove to be a useful tool for the future generations who want to get to know their families history better. Instead of looking through photo albums or doing searches for ‘family trees’, they could learn real information about their families straight from the sources! Who could tell a family’s history more accurately than the family itself – there is no way that people will come back from the grave and tell as accurate stories as these!
