"We don't have a choice on whether we do social media, the question is how well we do it." -- Erik Qualman
SOCIAL NETWORKING THROUGH THE AGES
"America at the mid-century should be the golden age of understanding for business. Never before has the businessman {woman} had so much paraphernalia with which to communicate to those about him {her}, and never before has he (she) spent so much time using it. And more and more, as he {she} looks about him {her}, he {she} is coming to wonder . . . Is anybody really listening?"
--Fortune magazine, pg. 77, 1950
In 1950, Fortune was asking, "Is anybody really listening?" That was long before the Internet took root and sent its offshoots of social networks across the world. For any of us who are experiencing the "paraphernalia with which to communicate" in the 21st century, the question "Is anybody really listening?" could expand to include, "Is anybody really understanding what they are listening to?"
Social networks have existed for centuries. The Incas sent runners from one village to the next to share the most up to date information and data. The High Priestesses would receive information and immediately send it "running" through the villages. Immediate in those days, was relative to the speed of the runner and the generosity of nature and wild animals. The current high-speed "runner" has long ago broken the 4 minute mile as it travels at increasing speeds. It shares the most up to date information and data educating the global communities and surrounding villages. The speed of the runner has changed but the intent of social networking hasn't.
The most important aspect of social networking, often unrecognized, is the social networker themselves. Social networking isn't just about the technologies of Facebook and Twitter. It is about each of us in the role of the social networker, the modern-day runner, the "high priestess" who chooses what message to send and when. Starting with the moment of thought, to its formulation in words, to the medium of communicating, to the receivers of the message, down to the form it creates; we have the power to broadcast game-changing thoughts to the entire world from the comfort of our couch. Why, from where and how we do this miracle is coming to light through science and our DNA. The form it creates - matter(s).
"... boundaries of "our universe" are not the boundaries of "the universe." - Ervin Laszlo, Science and the Akashic Field
Science is beginning to recognize the game changer of the Akashic Field: the possibility of a much more vast database containing everything. In our ability to expand our own personal boundaries lies the Metaverse. The internet acts as a mirror of that library of information. Each social networker accesses that informational database and becomes the modern-day Inca runner helping to form discussions and decisions happening amongst vast groups of people, globally. The more clear the original thought and its communication is, the more clear, the fact of the matter is.
THE ROLE OF "THE OBSERVER" IN SOCIAL NETWORKING
This is an extremely important piece of social networking. It is paramount that you remain aware of your role in participating as a social networker in the vast universal social network. This role of "the observer" is profound and can change the entire reality of what "The Observer" is observing. Whether conscious or not, there are no idle thoughts. All thinking, produces form at some level. Said a little differently, All thinking, hence all doing, produces form at some level.
As we become more aware of our role as "observer", we recognize the impact we have on what we are observing. Any system we are observing is perturbed. Throughout this blog series we have been observing some of the game changers being studied and recognized by scientist and sages. As you observe the current systems and the discoveries of the new sciences you are perturbing all systems. Conscious or unconscious, through your observation of these systems, you are co-creating new frameworks and it is shaping the world you are a participant in. This will become clearer as we go deeper into Science and Social Media - just ahead.
WHAT'S IT GOING TO BE?
This network of possibilities is available to all of us. Each generation has participated in the "paraphernalia with which to communicate." (Fortune, l950) Previous generations connected through thought, smoke clouds, words, runners, carrier pigeons, telegraphs and telephones, to name a few. The one constant factor in social networking is the communicator, the social networker.
Crossing the lines and borders of space and time, culture and countries, gender and age, each generation of communicators have moved towards becoming "We."
As we, the evolving human move towards the new attributes of humanity, we move into a conversation to co-create an experiential educational blueprint for the 21st century. The questions we'll ask are critical and paramount. These questions are shaping the answers we're receiving and in turn, are crafting humanity and our humanitarian focus for the 21st century.
YOU ARE NOT ALONE!
One of the obvious and yet subtle powers of social networking is the realization that we are not alone; we are not isolated and we are not separate. We are a click away from connecting at some level with someone, somewhere. We are within moments of connecting with one or millions. Gamers know and utilize this in ways we are only beginning to understand. Their ability to build a team from around the world in minutes is a testament to the power of social networking.
SCIENCE AND SOCIAL NETWORKING:
This is where that question from the 1950's Fortune magazine, "Is Anybody Listening?", gets really interesting. It seems that with each ping, text, tweet, email, Instagram, and pinterest, that the impact does not go unnoticed by the brain. The brain registers each mode of communication not only with a neighborly smile and wave, but as an experience with consequence. Each message has an effect in the brain and shows up as a new neuropathway. These neuropathways are being built faster than any extreme road crew reality program could build a super highway. Add that to the game changers of entanglement, M-theory and the understanding of DNA, and social networking becomes an early, undeveloped and under utilized network for connection with multiple directions and dimensions. Moving from 1950 to 2013 and the question becomes, "Is Everybody Listening?"
The experience of "not being alone" expands across all boundaries and beyond most of our current understanding. To author and build an experiential education model for the 21st century we must recognize the ramifications of social networking. Science is suggesting and recognizing that we are directly connected to the building of this vast network. Each of us is an architect and builder of the world we participate in. If only a small amount of what seems to be true is true, this next century ushers in an unfolding of a vast social network going beyond all the boundaries we have built our current educational, scientific and evolutionary systems on.
WHAT IF YOU HAD YOUR OWN TED TALK - EVERYDAY?
If you had to give a TED talk in front of one or one million, what would you say? If you were going to talk in front of an audience and you didn't know how many would be listening or the demographics of this audience, but you knew they could respond back at any time, would you prepare for your talk or just get up on "stage or online" and talk? If you would prepare, how would you prepare for the one or millions that could be listening? That thought alone, of getting up in public, is terrifying for most people. If you could even be persuaded to speak under those loose boundaries, how long would you prepare for that communication: months, weeks, days in advance?
Yet with the immediate availability of social networks, anonymous authors, open their computers or pull out their smartphones and collaborate in shaping the world often without much awareness as to the content and impact on their audience.
Based on the previous video, what is being said without recognition of its impact makes each tweet, email, Pinterest, Instagram, LinkedIn and Facebook post powerful. With so much information available supporting our involvement in the world we live in, would your conversations be the same if you were looking into the faces and eyes of all those who receive your posts, tweets, texts, and emails? How can education offer an experience of this profound truth through its curriculum?
These networks are instantaneously reflecting your thoughts as you post to Facebook, text, tweet, etc. The transparency of your thoughts help shape and form humanity by exposing itself through our current realities. Who you are flows through each communication you engage in whether you are conscious of this or not and those on the receiving end of your texts, tweets and posts are also effected.
POWER OF QUESTIONS:
The following on You tube is a wonderful example of a question clearly asked. The question expands the thoughts and experience of: those being interviewed, the interviewer, we who are observing, and what we "knew" moments before the question was posed.
EACH OF YOU: AS A SUPER POWER MAKING SUPER (im)PACTS
This is where the power and potential of you comes in to play. You are a free-thinking, individual. You have a universal library of information at your neuro-tips to access and that vast database won't argue with you about the questions you ask. You are part owner and major stockholder in the most powerful communication network the world has ever been aware of and as a PSN (Principle Social Networker), you are the fuel that powers and determines its effectiveness or ineffectiveness. As we build an experiential educational framework, social networking must be an integral piece. As curriculum is written, we must recognize each student's natural and innate capacity to add to the global consciousness. Through each form of social networking accessed by each social networker, new pathways are being laid that are changing the highways of information being accessed every moment. In much the same way as the physical exercises in this blog made us aware of our part in the exercise, students must become aware and acknowledge their part in this global shift in humanity. Each student must realize at a personal level, they are not separate from anyone, anywhere at anytime.
THE STRING THEORY, M THEORY, METAVERSE - MINDNETS
Social networks spiral around us in many variations. Our access is limited to our vision. 20/20 was thought to be perfect vision and "as we see", it might limit our true vision. Science is beginning to explore the ideas that our brains are different than our minds and that our minds are connected to "something" far vaster than, we the people, have recognized. With DNA research only beginning to scratch the surface of what we will come to know in the 21st century, the social networks can include as Buzz Lightyear said, "To Infinity and Beyond."
Experiential education invites each of us, the student, the teacher, all of humanity, to bask in the innumerable potentials that we have begun to understand, use and grown accustomed to through the use of the Akashic fields, the internet and the multitudes of social networks. We have already expanded our capacity to access information instantaneously around the world, information that could not have been contained in all the libraries around the world just 30 years ago. Generations are becoming acclimated to the current technologies and are looking for the add-ons and apps they have already begun to imagine.
WHAT CAME FIRST, THE HEARING OR THE LISTENING?
As we begin to recognize our impact on the world, we hopefully choose to be responsible for what we are co-creating. For the next seven days, listen carefully to the questions being asked around you. Not just the questions being directed at you personally but all the questions happening around you. Listen to the questions being asked by those in politics and media. If you are in school listen to the professors and other student's questions. If you work in an environment where co-workers and/or supervisors ask questions, listen to "their" questions. What are you hearing? In these situations, do "they" ask relevant, clear questions that are on point? Do they ask questions they already have the answers to? And while you're listening to "their" questions, listen to your own questions. Listen carefully to what you are saying, texting, tweeting, emailing, imaging. Are you asking relevant, concise, clear questions people can easily answer? As the receiver, what are you hearing?
OH, AND THEN THERE'S GAMING
"Games, in the twenty-first century, will be a primary platform for enabling the future."
--Jane McGonigal
From the book, Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World, Jane McGonigal quotes economist Edward Castronove: "Hundreds of millions of people worldwide are opting out of reality for larger and larger chunks of time." There are estimated to be over 500 million gamers. She goes on to say, "As we make these value judgments, hold moral debates over the addictive quality of games, and simultaneously rush to achieve massive industry expansion, a vital point is being missed. The fact that so many people of all ages, all over the world, are choosing to spend so much time in game worlds is a sign of something important, a truth that we urgently need to recognize."
This game changer isn't being left in the hands of scientists to validate or debunk. All ages, by the hundreds of millions, are giving us a preview of what is. " ... in today's society, computer and video games are fulfilling genuine human needs that the real world is currently unable to satisfy. Games are providing rewards that reality is not. They are teaching and inspiring and engaging us in ways that reality is not. They are bringing us together in ways that reality is not. And unless something dramatic happens to reverse the resulting exodus, we're fast on our way to becoming a society in which a substantial portion of our population devotes its greatest efforts to playing games, creates its best memories in game environments, and experiences its biggest successes in game worlds." (Jane McGonigal)
This is a game changer and we must include it in this experiential educational framework for the 21st century. Hundreds of millions of gamers are already showing us some of the critical components of a life worth involving ourselves in. These components must cultivate: imagination and creativity, spark the "sense of being fully alive, focused and engaged in every moment," purposeful, collaborative, personal and "augment our most essential human capabilities--to be happy, resilient, creative and empower us to change the world in meaningful ways."
Jane goes on to say, "Collectively the planet is now spending more than 3 billion hours a week gaming." Hundreds of millions of gamers are committed to creating their worlds. Our "quest" as collaborative authors and architects of this blueprint and framework for an experiential education is: how to harness and expand the hundreds of millions of gamers' commitment to their worlds, to focus at least some of those 3 billion hours a week to co-create this world, this universe, and our Metaverse?
Let's play with that as the possibility and opportunity. Let's make it-- Matter.