The conversation is all about twitter and other technologies and how these may or may not enable us to push up the Dunbar number. Those involved include the 5th Beatle of the Cluetrain JP Rangaswami (Jobsworth). author of Herd, Mark Earls (Herdmeister), uber blogger and techy Kevin Marks, Tech journalist (at the Guardian) Jack Schofield, musician, blogger and coder Jack Stow, knitting nomad @Carocat - and a bit of me.
It's one of twitter's weaknesses that valuable conversations can be difficult both to follow and to archive when multiple parties are involved - yet this is exactly when it is of it's greatest value: bringing people together around things they all care about: An adhoc fuzzy-edged community of purpose rather than a silo of friends.
Here's the snapshot. Go follow any of the folk involved to join in.
Is this about optimizing the Dunbar number rather than increasing it?
ReplyDeleteOptimizing the relationships, the count and the frequency surely would lead to leaner/cleaner communications. Could/would/should this number go down to 2?
Or is this a need to keep optimizing to keep the most relevant 150 close to you?
At what point does the messiness of communication (as seen in the above twitter stream) actually help?
Sorry I missed the conversation. The only technology that could raise the Dunbar number is neurotechnology. You have a hard wired limit to the number of relationships you can track in your brain. Social Software can, however, help you manage which 150 you track at a given moment in time. Think of the Dunbar number as a cache that can be refreshed, with new ties, rediscovered weak ties and letting others sift out of view. Grooming and other coordination costs fall with Social Software, accelerating your decision cycles when it comes to relationships.
ReplyDeleteGoogle Profile link is not working -- for clarity - the first comment from David is me (@zeroinfluencer), not David Cushman.
ReplyDelete@Ross, I agree with the idea of it being a cache.
ReplyDeleteWe're working on a system to find the most relevant people/data generating things on Twitter for Weavrs.com, so when you create a bot, it then goes of an finds its place in the social graphs - specifically for now, on Twitter.
As we try to model Weavrs behaviors on human-copying techniques, it's a tough call on the algorithm design should be caped at 150 or try to optimize down or see how high the number can be.
I like the idea of the Dunbar number as a cache. That's how I can manage 3000+ follows/following on Twitter; the Dunbar cache is refreshed as I go along. People coming in and out of focus depending on the topic, time of day for geographically distant followers, whether I'm tweeting anything of any use..
ReplyDeleteDavid: Thanks very much for breaking this out!
ReplyDeleteIf I can expand on the reference to Coase...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Coase
Putting it crudely, being friends with people involves relatively high transaction costs (time, letters, phone calls, beer, whatever). Things like Twitter and Facebook reduce the transaction costs, so it should be possible to be friends with more people.
This doesn't necessarily mean the Dunbar number is "wrong" (it's an approximation at best). However, most of us probably don't have 150-ish real-life acquaintances, and social media may allow us to have more. Also, I'd guess it probably increases "closeness" to our friends because we have more information about them.
Someone like @zephoria should already be writing a PhD on this stuff ;-)
I'm not that sure, I think there is a case for the 150 to be raised. From what I've read of Dunbar's work, there are at least two factors that drive the 150, it seems to be a function of neurocranial capacity modified by the linguistic capability of the primate. The distinction between man and nonhuman primates allows for more than the difference between volumes. So I would look at the level of sophistication of communication as a driver of larger numbers. Today we live in an age where, for the first time in history, we have archivable searchable retrievable communications. Oral language and the development of concepts is one step. Graphic and written language a second; print a third; radio and telephone a fourth; the internet a fifth....
ReplyDelete