Today's post expands Saturday's micro-rant on the impact of pervasive net-connection on human culture and consciousness. I used the term #tribenet as a tag representing the psychological environment created by continuous connection to social circles via multiple devices and social networks.
Pervasive net-connection is profoundly transforming us individually and collectively. Like any significant technological change it not only impacts
what we do but also
who we are. We cook in the medium of #tribenet like lobsters in a simmering pot. We are so contextualized within the change that the transformation is almost invisible to us except in retrospect.
Like all cultural and psychological change created through new technology, #tribenet works through the medium of our biology and psychology. For instance, the desire to expose the mundane events of day-to-day life to our virtual tribe likely stems from deep rooted psychological templates unfulfilled since hunter/gatherer days. Tribe 1.0 was social adaptation to the pre-agrarian tech environment; #tribenet is adaptation to the pervasively networked tech environment.
When our attention is focused on #tribenet we are not fully present in the physical world. We check in with #tribenet every hour like young children making sure mommy keeps watching as we go from ride to ride at the playground. Shifting our minds hundreds of times each day to the virtual environment of #tribenet alters the subconscious ground of our mental models of reality. If a tree falls in a forest and someone is there to hear, there is still no sound until they upload the video and share it on #tribenet.
(After posting yesterday, I found out that there was an existing social network called tribe.net. This post is NOT about that site.)
