With the popularity of companies and search engines using social media data to better understand ourselves and make our online experiences more fruitful, it seems that social media is finding more and more ways of infiltrating our lives even if we momentarily choose to stay away. There certainly is something to be said about getting recommendations from expert or trusted sources, but what happens when we start relying upon a network so much that everything we see and do is increasingly solely influenced by people in that network? That trusted source can also be yourself - when a music or movie recommendation engine starts using your previous song/movie history as a basis for future movies, you're inherently limiting yourself to a certain sub-set of genres.
For the online newbie or infrequent user, this can actually be a great thing, as it actually opens up your world to things related to your interests that you didn't quite know about but are worth examining. The underlying assumption here is that a person has independently formed a set of preferences through life experiences, chance encounters, etc. Even then, this is sometimes a silly assumption considering how uninitiated or generally closed-minded people can be - that is, their "broader" offline experiences may still be pretty narrow. But the danger we're seeing now is that people who are not only "live" online but were raised online - say typical teenagers - are never allowing themselves to form this broader set of experiences and real-world influences. As a result, the narrow-mindedness that people experience offline through limitations in mobility and education may very well be mimicked online. We'll probably see an increase in online "islands" - for example, people may gravitate toward sites/blogs/social interactions with those with the same political views, and after a while, these view can get as warped and shocking as anything you might experience in encountering extremists in the physical world.
Ironically, this clustering of digital communities resulting in online islands may not totally be a bad thing when it comes to one category: creative endeavors. One of the early consequences of being so interconnected through technology was the group-think that became apparent in creative endeavors, very noticeable in music trends. The same type of hooks, beats, and lyrical content seems to be present in every song these days. Of course it may not just be the access to music that's influencing artists to mimic others, but also the temptation to just "do what works" to generate a hit without taking creative risks (Rihanna-style). A positive side-effect of online clustering may be the formation of independently constructed creative circles. Except this time, geography may not be the biggest influence. Instead of "Seattle" punk or "West-coast" rap, we may get "Republican" rap (influenced by political views) and "Grey's Anatomy" ballads (influenced by fans of the TV show and story lines).
So what's the take-away from all of this? Well, let's just be cognizant of how our thoughts and actions might be influenced by the advent of instantaneous news and connectivity, and try to be our own individuals. It's easy to live through other things these days, from the minute-by-minute social updates you might be plugged into (taking way from the actual event since everyone's busy creating a front online), to multi-player video games which suck you into an alternate reality - but the important thing is to LIVE. And believe it or not, much like our body's need for sleep, the ability to truly live and maintain our objectivity and creativity might involve disconnecting from the hive.
Perhaps another post is in order on how this relates to trading (overtrading, the need for constant feedback from the market, and the power of independent thinking and disconnection from real-time data).
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