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Faux Friendship - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Education - http://chronicle.com/article...
bellegarde-webb, Tristan Hambling, Ruchira S. Datta and 2 other people liked this
""…[a] numberless multitude of people, of whom no one was close, no one was distant. …" —War and Peace "Families are gone, and friends are going the same way." —In Treatment We live at a time when friendship has become both all and nothing at all. Already the characteristically modern relationship, it has in recent decades become the universal one: the form of connection in terms of which all others are understood, against which they are all measured, into which they have all dissolved. Romantic partners refer to each other as boyfriend and girlfriend. Spouses boast that they are each other's best friends. Parents urge their young children and beg their teenage ones to think of them as friends. Adult siblings, released from competition for parental resources that in traditional society made them anything but friends (think of Jacob and Esau), now treat one another in exactly those terms. Teachers, clergymen, and even bosses seek to mitigate and legitimate their authority by asking...
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- Wildcat
from Bookmarklet
Stop calling it education-it's indoctrination, plain and simple!
- Aaron Kendrick
I suspect that even though the term "friendship" may apply more broadly, people still regard distant others in the same way WRT privacy and amount of time hanging out. There was an article I read a while back that surveyed students over time and found they kept the same # of "close friends" while the # of "friends" increased dramatically. I'll link you if I come across it.
- Arikia
tag: Dunbar
- Bora Zivkovic
tag: Dunbar Number as a Limit to Group Sizes: http://www.lifewithalacrity.com/2004...
Bora Zivkovic: tag: Dunbar Number as a Limit to Group Sizes: http://tinyurl.com/e3t8w - http://sciencepond.com/BoraZ...
Dunbar's Number - Groups in Second Life: http://phasinggrace.blogspot.com/2007... tag: Dunbar
Dunbar number is not what you think it is - Seth does not grasp it: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_b...
Joe Bonner, Itachi, Dan Freeman and Micah Wittman liked this
"tag: Dunbar"
- Bora Zivkovic
Bora, are these points what your getting at: http://phasinggrace.blogspot.com/2007... ?
- Micah Wittman
Yes
- Bora Zivkovic
Social Networks http://scienceblogs.com/cortex... Friends (don't) let friends become obese #scibling
tag: Dunbar
- Bora Zivkovic
Dunbar's Number and the Future of Communications http://gigaom.com/2009... tag: Dunbar
suelibrarian liked this
"Would the real social network please stand up?" http://www.zephoria.org/thought... by @zephoria and @blurky
tag: Dunbar
- Bora Zivkovic
Repeat: How to Stop Worrying and Learn to Love the Internet http://www.douglasadams.com/dna... by Douglas Adams tag: Dunbar
Björn Brembs and Meryn Stol liked this
"Because the Internet is so new we still don’t really understand what it is. We mistake it for a type of publishing or broadcasting, because that’s what we’re used to. So people complain that there’s a lot of rubbish online, or that it’s dominated by Americans, or that you can’t necessarily trust what you read on the web. Imagine trying to apply any of those criticisms to what you hear on the telephone. Of course you can’t ‘trust’ what people tell you on the web anymore than you can ‘trust’ what people tell you on megaphones, postcards or in restaurants. Working out the social politics of who you can trust and why is, quite literally, what a very large part of our brain has evolved to do. For some batty reason we turn off this natural scepticism when we see things in any medium which require a lot of work or resources to work in, or in which we can’t easily answer back – like newspapers, television or granite. Hence ‘carved in stone.’ What should concern us is not that we can’t take...
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- Bora Zivkovic
I want to carve that quote in stone. Granite.
- Bora Zivkovic
Yes very cool. Also gives much to think of in terms of problems to solve. How to determine reliability of sources? I think one could call it literacy, I think. Or critical thinking. But humans with all their cognitive biases all easily fooled. For example, an often repeated fact is easily regarded as true.
- Meryn Stol
Fishing village metaphor for information-exchange and organizing? http://www.alphagalileo.org/ViewIte...
tag: Dunbar
- Bora Zivkovic
Comps readings: virtual communities: http://scienceblogs.com/christi... by @cpikas #scibling tag: Dunbar
GROOMING THE BEAST http://www.buffalobeast.com/130... tag: Dunbar
RT @smalljones Robin Dunbar lecture on his Number and What Makes Us Human? http://www.pulse-project.org/... My monkey brain loves this video! tag: Dunbar
Online social networking isn't for everyone - http://scienceblogs.com/confess...
Daniel Cornwall, Jack H. Pincus, Martin Fenner and 11 other people liked this
I am never going to get my wife on a social network. She doesn't want to spend "extra time" on the computer above and beyond her work time. And that is ok.
- joe is...
You can't just join a network and hope that something of interest to you will transpire. It takes a little work on your part: engage with the right people, discuss the right topics and so on. It's fine by me if people are not interested in online networks, but to dismiss them without understanding them is no argument.
- Neil Saunders
Well, I don't think Wayne is dismissing online social networks without understanding them. I think he understands them just fine. That's why his post is so interesting to me -- his every reaction to every facet is almost completely opposite to mine. And yet, I would also agree with his self-description at the beginning -- I'm not that social a person off-line either.
- John Dupuis
Joe, I never thought I'd get my wife into Facebook either, but now she's on it more than I am. And she's blogging too.
- John Dupuis
Admittedly I have not yet read Wayne's post. The quoted segment came across as "joining a network will expose me to lots of rubbish that I don't want to see." To me that suggested lack of understanding about filtering and niche communities. Guess I should read the full post, if that is out of context.
- Neil Saunders
It's not so much out of context as that Wayne explains how he mostly satisfies his various needs without social networks. In retrospect, I probably should have included more of his post, but I didn't want to end up with too long a post myself.
- John Dupuis
Don't know how I would survive without online stuff.
- claudia
I think I should do the tag: Dunbar for this. His ideas of what is friendship and what is networking are interesting. I don't think he's right, but I think I see where he is coming from and it is not being a 'curmudgeon'.
- Bora Zivkovic
+1 neil's comment in the blog
- Richard Akerman
"The level and immediacy of engagement that most of these tools offer just doesn't provide much value for me." Bivens-Tatum's statements throughout the post focus on what he gets out of something. His post shows no sense of what worth he would provide for others by participating. I too would love to read about his non-library perspectives.
- Polly Potter
Facebook’s “In-House Sociologist” Shares Stats on Users’ Social Behavior - http://www.insidefacebook.com/2009...
Alicia Mickelsen, Nia, Ibrahim Tarlig and 94 other people liked this
"In other words, Facebook users comment on stuff from only about 5-7% of their Facebook friends. And as has been shown by many other studies, women communicate with more people in all cases than men. “People who are members of online social networks are not so much ‘networking’ as they are ‘broadcasting their lives to an outer tier of acquaintances who aren’t necessarily inside the Dunbar circle,’” Lee Rainie, the director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project, says."
- Thomas Hawk
from Bookmarklet
then again, I comment on stuff from only about 0% of my Facebook friends, because, well, Facebook is pretty boring.
- Thomas Hawk
likewise.
- Parth Awasthi
@Thomas: +3. The only reason I go there is when one of my High School friends finds me there.
- AJ Kohn
I'm doing something wrong or I'm really unpopular, 120 "friends" or 500 "friends", who are these people?
- Ace
Interesting stats. I do have to work on those 10 friends, I am not quite talkative.
- Carlos Lorenzo
every now and again it sort of freaks me out when I log on to facebook and some random person tries to chat with me. I don't want that. I have AIM and Yahoo Messenger for that.
- Thomas Hawk
Memo to Web sociologists: Dunbar Number is meaningless online. It is a measure of physical interaction in the RW, limited by time and transportation, not mental abilities of humans. Online, we can have multiples of Dunbar numbers simultaneously.
- Bora Zivkovic
That is incorrect: "Dunbar's number was first proposed by British anthropologist Robin Dunbar, who theorized that "this limit is a direct function of relative neocortex size, and that this in turn limits group size ... the limit imposed by neocortical processing capacity is simply on the number of individuals with whom a stable inter-personal relationship can be maintained.""
- coldbrew
Dunbar was dead wrong - the limitations are not cognitive,
- Bora Zivkovic
It was and is a theory, and it didn't ever cite a specific number. Your original statement was that it was based on real world interactions when, in fact, it was based on "neocortical processing capacity."
- coldbrew
The Memo was to sociologists, not to Dunbar himself, because it is them who took it and ran away with it, assigning it a number and not realizing that limitations are physical, not cognitive. They fell in love with the idea, without critically engaging with it. I am glad that I know Communications profs who have realized this and teach about Dunbar Number correctly in the context of the Web.
- Bora Zivkovic
or: "Facebook’s “In-House Sociologist” Shares Stats on Boring People's Behavior" ;)
- Meryn Stol
From the post, it was unclear whether the communications were measured for all time, or just within a particular period (i.e. the last six months). I just joined Facebook Thursday morning, so my comment ratio is pretty high.
- Ontario Emperor
So you could probably handle 300,000 personal relationships because cognition isn't an issue?
- coldbrew
It is to be seen what the cognitive limits are. Online, one can swiftly move from one social circle to another. A lot of it does not even require 1-to-1: I check quickly what everyone is broadcasting, and I hope many of them quickly scan what I am broadcasting. I may get into 1-to-1 with one or several of them in the morning, and a totally different group in the afternoon.
- Bora Zivkovic
About 90% of the people in the world - and this includes the highly mobile USA - are born, live and die in one place, often in the same house, rarely or never traveling more than 100 miles from their birthplace. They build their social network in RL - and that is about 150 people.
- Bora Zivkovic
Online, one can have multiples of social groups. Last week in NYC, I met and had a grand time with my "NYC social circle", all initially discovered online, although I may not be in daily contact with any one of them. One's social groups go in and out of one's attention all the time. We go through phases several times a day.
- Bora Zivkovic
And I do not consider my NYC friends any lesser than friends I have at home where I live. I know some people from online interactions MUCH better, in greater depth and detail of mutual understanding, than my next-door neighbors, in-laws or the person I worked with for a year in 2001.
- Bora Zivkovic
I'm having trouble rectifying two statements you've made: 1) "the limitations are not cognitive" 2) "It is to be seen what the cognitive limits are."
- coldbrew
Dunbar Number, used by sociologists to be around 150 is not the cognitive limit. Cognitive limit will be larger, much larger. It exists, but we did not get there (i.e., determining/measuring it) yet. Ask Scoble - he may be close ;-)
- Bora Zivkovic
"Dunbar's number is a theoretical cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships...No precise value has been proposed for Dunbar's number, but a commonly cited approximation is 150."
- coldbrew
Another problem is temporal. In the example of the usual people who never travel, their social circle is pretty static throughout their lives. But for people like us, it can be quite dynamic. You engage intensively with a group for a while, then move on, then come back to the same group 20 years later, etc. So, there is now a temporal dynamic on top of spatial and we need to agree on what the definitions are (e.g., time-frame of one's Number).
- Bora Zivkovic
I agree with that, and I believe the number will differ among people substantially; but there will always be an average. I don't think you'll find an argument from anyone that digital communications removes the barriers to interact with greater numbers of people, but one's Dunbar number depends on whether a few simple interactions constitutes a "stable social relationship." [EDIT: removed pronoun for clarity ]
- coldbrew
I agree we need to have a good definition of the terms "stable", "social" and "relationship". I am now brewing a blog post about this - thank you ;-)
- Bora Zivkovic
That sounds like a good idea. This can be quite an academic discussion, and somewhat distant from my formal education (hm, I wonder if you could draw parallels to molecular interactions? Some proteins are comprised of thousands of atoms.). I'll be sure to read your take.
- coldbrew
Social media is really great for increasing one's "loose ties". It doesn't have to be merely broadcast. You can engage with people when they're doing something what interests you.
- Meryn Stol
http://friendfeed.com/e... "What mainly goes up, therefore, is not the core network but the number of casual contacts that people track more passively. This corroborates Dr Marsden’s ideas about core networks, since even those Facebook users with the most friends communicate only with a relatively small...
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- Noah David Simon
I really don't see significant difference here between gender. I would of thought it would be higher. ...no I really do think it would be higher.. these numbers are quite misleading. the intimacy in the contacts are quite different in a number spread between genders. women are more apt to have more semi intimate friends and males are more likely to have more very intimate friends. and...
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- Noah David Simon
tag: Dunbar
- Bora Zivkovic
I think FB missed a bet to turn off user comments on a whole host of things. When users post status updates to their own wall, any of their friends can comment. When anyone else writes on a given user's wall, no one can comment on those posts. Stupid decision.
- Andrew C
Woot, and today I see comments on wall messages are back.
- Andrew C
Forget Dunbar’s Number, Our Future Is in Scoble’s Number - http://bhc3.wordpress.com/2009...
guruvan (Rob Nelson), Paul Roberts, Jay Neff and 7 other people liked this
I'm not calling it Scoble's number.
- Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins
What should really be Scoble's number: the number of servers hosed due to him announcing a new toy ;)
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
In my parable of the fishing village, found in this post by @jny2, http://networkednews.wordpress.com/2009... I try to take you back to when we were self-informing.
tag: Dunbar (a new experiment - tagging FF posts for easy retrieval when writing a post about the mis-use of the concept of Dunbar Number when applied to online world.
- Bora Zivkovic
@Bora, why not just use a 64-bit hash?
- j1m
trying different ways - searching FF for Dunbar brings in lots of irrelevant stuff and duplicates. When I add the word "tag" with it and then search for "tag: Dunbar" I get only what I picked and nothing else - all in one place, ready to use. I could have used a hashtag instead, or some other symbol as well.
- Bora Zivkovic
The Serendipity of Attention - http://bhc3.wordpress.com/2009...
Mahesh CR and Moses Kpetigo liked this
"In the graphic, I categorize all the bands outside Dunbar’s Number as the province of Scoble’s Number. To track people well outside your core 150, you need a way that aids the goals of better efficiency and more systematic coverage, while preserving the serendipity that accompanies the fluidity of our interests."
- Hutch Carpenter
tag: Dunbar
- Bora Zivkovic
RT: @alanrae @amcafee: Article in The Economist on Facebook and the 'Dunbar Number" - http://bit.ly/FxUfW - topic also in my E2.0 book. - http://twitter.com/lisahar...
tag: Dunbar
- Bora Zivkovic
The Micro-Sociology of Networks - http://darmano.typepad.com/logic_e...
"Good stuff David. One thing I don't see there is the challenge of increasing the number of people you follow. Slides 22 and 48 hit on the notion of our networks of "friends". Slide 48 is definitely a trend of the future in terms of human-filtering. Extending that...do you rely on all the people you follow for this filtering? Or do we fundamentally all have our Dunbar's Number set of people to whom we depend as filters? My sense is there's a middle ground in there, that will continue to be refined over time."
- Hutch Carpenter
tag: Dunbar
- Bora Zivkovic
"Primates on Facebook" -- Facebook friends and the Dunbar number http://www.economist.com/science...
tag: Dunbar
- Bora Zivkovic
Maintained Relationships on Facebook | overstated - http://overstated.net/2009...
Danica Radovanovic, mzec, Meryn Stol and 2 other people liked this
OK, we are starting to get somewhere with this now. The silly 'Dunbar Number Is Teh Law' articles are starting to drive me crazy - online environment is qualitatively different.
- Bora Zivkovic
Bumping this up to have handy for myself....
- Bora Zivkovic
tag: Dunbar
- Bora Zivkovic
The BEAST: America's Best Fiend - http://www.buffalobeast.com/130...
Evolutionary anthropologist, biologist and psychologist Robin Dunbar is most famous for comparing primate brain mass and troupe size to find the social limits imposed by the human brain. Dunbar’s number (about 150) can be seen limiting the populations of indigenous tribes, army units, corporate offices and other social groups worldwide. Ian Murphy called Dunbar at his office at the Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology at the University of Oxford.
- Andria Krewson
tag: Dunbar
- Bora Zivkovic
Lots of ground covered here, relevant to social media, coworking, sociology, etc. Dunbar sounds awesome http://snurl.com/eo6ev (via @BrianR) - http://twitter.com/alexkno...
tag: Dunbar
- Bora Zivkovic
Amusing interview with Robin Dunbar (as in Dunbar Number aka Monkeysphere) in the Buffalo Beast http://www.buffalobeast.com/130...
Mr. Gunn and Bora Zivkovic liked this
tag: Dunbar
- Bora Zivkovic
Thinking about @Dave_Gorman's following, here's an interesting post on Dunbar's number and Twitter. http://melaniemcbride.net/2009...
Bora Zivkovic liked this
tag: Dunbar
- Bora Zivkovic
Dunbar, Facebook, church - Dallas Baptist Standard - http://www.baptiststandard.com/index...
Bora Zivkovic liked this
tag: Dunbar
- Bora Zivkovic
giustini: Dear colleagues: 'using' Twitter is not about following one or two people...OK, stay under the Dunbar threshold but build your network - http://twitter.com/giustin...
giustini: Dear colleagues: 'using' Twitter is not about following one or two people...OK, stay under the Dunbar threshold but build your network
- Richard Akerman
tag: Dunbar
- Bora Zivkovic
Friend in Feed is a Friend indeed - http://unrulednotebook.wordpress.com/2009...
Alexey, Meryn Stol, Mr. Gunn and Bora Zivkovic liked this
"There are no real friends in the social web. In the social web the word friend has come to mean ‘one who does my information filter’."
- Bora Zivkovic
+1 Bora
- Richard Akerman
Hey, often this is what a real friend does too.
- j1m
another one for the 'thoughts on Dunbar Number'....
- Bora Zivkovic
A better quote, Bora: "when you connect and initially all you hear is noise in such social media, you are in the wrong crowd - not necessarily the wrong media." Maybe instead of "friend" we should call them "trusted source of low noise information?"
- Mr. Gunn
Yes, but there is a flip side to it as well. There are people who we only know online and yet we know them better, deeper, more intimately, and feel closer to than RL "friends". Because online many people spill their guts, while reserving RL conversations to superficial chatter about weather and sports.
- Bora Zivkovic
Online we also tend to find people who are interesting to us. Many RL friends are so due to chance - went to same school, work at the same office, share the same apartment building. Not much to talk about. I can talk about a lot of stuff with like-minded people I found online.
- Bora Zivkovic
Look at this discussion, for instance: http://friendfeed.com/e...
- Bora Zivkovic
and as I once quipped: "blogging is a way to find people to have beer with"
- Bora Zivkovic
tag: Dunbar
- Bora Zivkovic
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