Many Screens. Many Masks?

Many Screens. Many Masks.

Spring 2011

This is on old conceptual model I was using around 2000 to explore the relationship between screen size and time.

The basic idea being that the size of the screen predetermines how we experience time. Therefore certain activities are optimal depending on the screen size. The size of the screen predetermined how much time we would spend engaged with the screen. i.e. The smaller the screen the less amount of time we need to be actively engaged with the screen to achieve the desired outcome. How we experienced time also predefined the optimal content or more accurately user experience for each screen size. The red squares nominated the optimal mix between screen size and time.

As a model I still find it useful. Although today I tend to expand it into 3-D model by adding new dimensions. For example note the correlation between the fragmentation of time (from Agricultural to Telecoms) and the fragmentation of the message. We move from structured to unstructured messages (i.e. Data). The other thing of interest is how the audience changes as its experience with time changes.

You see as we move up from linear agricultural time to non-linear real time we discover that the personality of the audience also fragments. As a collective, an audience watching a movie, the audience is as one with the experience. You could say they wear a collective mask. The same thing applies in the lounge room when we watch TV together. We wear a collective mask. But it is a different mask to the one we wear at the cinema.

Now consider this when we watch somebody using a mobile phone to text or speak with someone we discover they are wearing a public/private mask. More importantly they wear a new mask with each connection. We discover that their personality fragments and they don the appropriate public/private mask for the occasion. This of course is the true meaning of social. The carnival of the mask.

Which brings me to the Facebook problem and the true value of the social graph (i.e. the "big data" business technology model at the heart of Facebook's market valuation)

You see, when you think about it, depending on the communications tools we employ, we all express different personalities. Our Facebook personality is a mask just as much as our telephone demeanour or our job interviewing demeanour or our coffee shop demeanour is a mask. The same applies to Pininterest, LinkedIn, Instagram and Twitter. These are not accurate expressions of who we really are. They are expressions of what we choose to be at that time and on that channel. They are in effect little more than literary figures. More imagined than real.

The weakness of the social graph/big data narrative then is simply this. It is little more than literary theory for the masses. A method of deconstructing literary masks rather than people. A map of the author's literary intent rather than a map of the author's "social" profile.

As I have said before Facebook, like much of the web, is an industrial age solution to an information age opportunity. Its worth is measured by the amount of time people spend on the site and the amount of data it generates. Yet it is self evident that the "real time", the now time, opportunity is all about less being more. The winner being the solution that allows me to find you and conduct the exchange in the most efficient way. A platform for building and displaying masks is merely an adjunct to that objective.

This in the end is why I would suggest the whole social movement is largely redundant.

The key words here are find and exchange. Needless to say 10 years into the social media revolution narrative and Google and Amazon still own the inside running on these two words.

At least on the web. As for mobile we'll just have to wait and see.

Till next time...