Interesting site. Good luck with it.

- Greg

Pamela, you mentioned centralized government. Centralized systems are my main concern. I am trying to understand how the new technology is changing the power structure in our societies. I see a massive movement towards decentralization emerging. The new tools of communication, coordination, and coordination make networks grow (and they grow!), and this in turn rewards sharing and collaboration, and gives value to the individual. While this is happening in the social space, there is in parallel an awakening at the individual level. People are realizing their individual value and the fact that they can actually make things happen by collaborating with others. This is what I call the “MULTITUDE SOCIAL MOVEMENT”.

New institutions are emerging to compete with classical centralized, and now corrupt, ones. The potential of these collaborative networks that can spawn the globe is far greater than any classical institution. The entire world is at the point of phase transition. The corporate/financial elite agenda for globalization and world domination becomes impracticable, because it is based on a obsolete view of the world. It doesn’t take into account a very well interconnected and empowered multitude.

We need to be very careful though. As the effective power is transfered to the multitude, key resources remain in the hands of the old masters of our society, including the access to the military machine.

We need people like you Greg, to understand what is happening around us, where our society is going, and to make sure this abrupt social phase transition will be a smooth ride.

Nice. Thanks for sharing.

- Greg

Never forget, you will be amazed who knows who, and a small act of kindness can rebound and change your life forever for the better.
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Thanks for the great story. Have a happy and safe New Year.

- Greg

I met about 20% of my connections at conferences between 2007 and now. My ability to see connections exploded after adding a relatively small number of these conference people, especially speakers in 2007.

It is clear now that these people were natural connectors and their networks likely included other connectors. Adding them to a modest network created as you describe an “instantaneous phase transition”. Too bad I did not gather the metrics, but great to understand the why. Also love the Tonto story.

Thank your kind words. I also think that you hit on an important point that social network analysis has brought to the fore: Anybody in the network can be influential.

Often, marketers get so caught up in numbers and targeting that they forget that consumers are real people with real lives who do real things. They call off-target audience that they reach “wastage.”

One thing that I really like about the effect of social networks is that it keeps marketers honest. It magnifies word of mouth to such an extent that no one can be ignored.

- Greg

Good points. Local communities are the building blocks of social networks.

- Greg