Brain Leaks and the Dangers of Info-Seep

We are all media outlets. We are breaking news. We are consensus and aggregation of thought. We are the origin of the trends we follow. We are voyeurs of a meta-existence. We are the cause and remedy of the erosion of normality.

I'm getting a bit carried away with my pretensions there. I don't mind that though, that last bit was an unedited stream of thought - each bit could have been a Tweet, followed by a small, small group and for no more joy than to have my ideas expressed.

Yet the grains of truth are there.

We are all media outlets and breaking news. This step change in media interaction and feedback marks a new era of communication; a 'piscean age' of almost psychic interconnection. Someone is where they need to be to witness the event that is happening, they in turn are interconnected to their social network ( real or web ), the network links to the 'web'. The media are as poised to devour the ramblings of Joe Soap, just as much as they are ready for the news-bite of Joe Journalist.

We are consensus and aggregate. We are the origin of the trends we follow. Studies show that crowd sourcing can provide a more stable and worthy opinion than a committee. Wikipedia is a prime example of that but I shall authorise that statement no more than this. Trends, fads and memes come from this kind of behaviour. The downside of this is that we assimilate information and ideas from all over without any real qualification other than the power of consensus and aggregate. A thousand people stating a falsehood, does not make it true.

We are voyeurs of a meta-existence. We are the cause and remedy of the erosion of normality. I found out about the sad death of Ali Bongo directly from Paul Daniels Twitter - at around the same time Russel brand was asking me how to create a link - I don't know them personally, I was just watching their info feed and they weren't talking to me personally, they were just yapping their thoughts into the unknown. So now it seems I am a direct audience, one to one performance for everyone, and if I am the audience and I create the need for performance simply by the fact of passive interest then where will the future take us?

This stream of thought began in the source response of 'How to find value in being a virtual networking hussy'. Some would equate Value here with money. The answer is I haven't yet found out to make money from being a networking hussy but by Odin's beard, someones surely found out how to make money from me. As for 'value', that's something else. Look to the Sophists.

Everyone will no doubt continue to expand their levels of interaction, the software will expand to encompass all networks and provide content intuitively, the hardware will expand to encompass all levels of activity and then, it seems, there will be no you or I - there will just be we the audience/creator. Where celebrity will be judged by ones hit counter...

until then let me distract you with this.