The hive mind in insects, and animals is the awareness that they’re living/working within a community. Ants, bees, and termites are good examples of insects that are consciousness of their follow ants, bees, and termites. People are also aware that we work/live in a community. Having a hive mind can also refer to a group’s collective consciousness.

Shlok Vaidya spoke on his blog about his research of the history of warfare. This connects to the hive mind, because as humans we should all have a collective awareness of the simple fact that we’re all human. However, that is not always the case. Vaidya states, “The history of warfare looks something like this cycle that repeats itself within the governance market – between an insurgent governance platform and the dominant platform of the time. Victory is gauged by market-share of each platform.” He goes on to speak about tribes warring other tribes, states warring other states, then nations warring other nations. He finishes by saying the future of warfare maybe humans warring against what he calls “post-humans”. Which I believe he’s referring to some sort of artificial intelligence, robots, computers, etc.

War, and warfare is the unfortunate symptom of being human. There will always be those who stand for power, greed, and violence. Using our hive minds we have to aware of what we’re creating. Robots, computers, and AI are a useful, and helpful part of our lives. But how smart, how intelligent can, or should we make them?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tipping_Point

The author of the book, “The Tipping Point” defines a tipping point as “the moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point.” This rule can be applied to epidemics, break outs, viral media, etc.

Gladwell goes on to describe the three elements that go into the creation of a social epidemic, which ultimitly leads to a tipping point…

1. Connectors - People who are very good at making friends, and acquaintances. These people have a gift of bringing everyone else together.

2. Mavens - People who specialize in gathering information, we rely on them to connect us to what’s new, and happening now.

3. Salesmen - Charismatic people who have a gift at negotiation, and being able to convince others to do as they see fit.

These facts can help us figure out what the next trends are, and how we as the people come together, and create social change.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ari-melber/obamas-voter-registration_b_133475.html?view=print

During the 2008 election, President Obama used a verity of ways to reach out to first time voters. One of those ways was by using the network effect, where students created a network through cell phones, and other social networking sites. As the network grew larger, the more successful the students were at getting the word out. Personally, I think it’s a great tool to get younger people, and new voters interested in voting. The key is to educate them on what the options are, and let them decide which way to go. As the article predicts, social networks will most definitely play a huge part in future presidential elections.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect

The network effect simply states that more people using a product the better, and more resourceful the product becomes to it’s users. In other words, the more people use something, the better the service will be. This is because, the more business a company does, the more the money it takes in, and in turn the more it will spend on service. Good examples are older the telephone companies, Bell Telephone. The more people bought telephones, the more phone lines Bell was able to put down, the better the service it became.

A modern example would be Google. Ten years ago, Google, and Yahoo were fairly neck, and neck in terms of internet searches. However, Google did a better job advertising itself over the net, and people started to believe that their company provided superior searches. It wasn’t long before Google over took the rest of the competition.

Of course there are negative that come with the network effect. The more people using the product, the busier it can become. A social networking site could crash just based on the number of users using the site’s bandwidth. Also, once a company reaches the top, it can be become complacent. Especially if there are not other real competitors to take over any share of the market.

http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/29/ipad-cloud-2/

This article discusses the future of the internet in terms of users consuming content. Before, in ‘Cloud 1’ we had sites like Amazon, Yahoo, and Goolge, that allowed users to search through content, and discover new information. This opened a whole new door in terms of how people get information, and how they could use Google for example to create new ideas. However, in “Cloud 2” social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and even YouTube have allowed people to create their own content, by creating profiles, uploading photos, and videos of themselves. Now, users are more focused on learning information about ourselves, and each other rather than just the raw information that yahoo, and google provided. Cloud 2 enhances the users experience by creating a world that is more familiar to them, because they are the ones creating the content.

http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/05/18/twitter-for-fishermen/#more-25639

India is using not just Facebook, and Twitter to socialize through their large population. The use of cell phones are a case-in-point for India, and how they’ve begun to use cell phones as a way to communicate faster, and easier. Many people in the west typically use their phones for internet browsing, in fact, last month data useage was actually larger per user than text messaging, or phone minutes. This means people are spending more time browsing the internet mobily, rather than calling, or texting.

In India, the number of cell-phone and PC users are growing. Eventually, they could go down the path that many North American, and European countries have by over using the internet mobily.

http://bb.csueastbay.edu/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab=courses&url=/bin/common/course.pl?course_id=_170575_1&frame=top

Fifteen years ago, the internet was just starting out, and there still only a few ways for people to find new, exciting content. People could go to the movies, or watch a VHS. They could turn on their TV, or radio. However, the content is almost all cases was created by people within the news & entertainment industries.

Today, of course a lot has changed. The internet has provided people with an outlet to create their own content. Sites like YouTube, and Facebook allow people to share, and connect through social networking. Blogging sites like Tumblr, Wordpress, and LiveJournal have given the average person a voice during public discourse.

The problem lies within these new outlets, that there are too many outlets. The fear is that any news, or information will become noise, because the line between fact, and fiction will become blurred. People will trust their favorite blogger over the newscaster on television, that may or may not be a good thing. How trustworthy, and reliable are bloggers? Is there someone fact-checking them?

http://bb.csueastbay.edu/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab=courses&url=/bin/common/course.pl?course_id=_170575_1&frame=top

Google’s famous slogan is, “Don’t Be Evil’, however that’s contrary to their business model which is to take over the world. In the past ten years they’ve gone from an up start company search engine, to giant billion dollar enterprise with hundreds of smaller companies to it’s name. For almost anything popular on the web today, you can name a Google product or company that has some stake in it. The future for Google is in social networking, they must adapt their business to run like Facebook, Twitter, and others. Otherwise, they stand to loose money, and popularity during this transition phase of the internet. Google hopes to come out with smart search engines that basically “know” who you are. It will know all the places you like eat, shop, and go for entertainment. Google wants this search engine to know you so well, that it can actually suggest places to eat, things to buy, movies to see, etc. To think that a machine someplace, somewhere knows all this personal information about you is kind of creepy. Will people follow through with Google’s suggestions? Only time will tell.

http://www.businessinsider.com/if-youre-in-the-internet-business-and-you-dont-watch-this-sean-parker-video-you-might-as-well-quit-right-now-2010-9

Sean Park was the president of Facebook, and former co-creator of Napster. In this video he discusses the future of networking on the internet. His argument is that sites like Google which are purely information based, will become less important in the future than social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, etc. Google has no social networking site as of now, and stands to loose ground on a growing business market. In fact, Google’s overall business has shrunk in the last five years, and there are rumors that they’re currently working on a social networking site to compete with Facebook. Parker’s point is clearly, that if you’re in the business of making money through online sites, you need to adapt to the social networking (web 2.0) structure.

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-producer-of-middle-men-talks-to-us-about-how-pornographers-invented-e-commerce-2010-8

Many websites in the early days of the world wide web wanted to establish an online presence that profited by selling their products. Early sites like Amazon, eBay, and other online stores allowed customers to shop, and pay with their credit cards. While many of the “.com” business were focusing on purely growing their business, the pornography industry embraced web as a new medium, and a new source for income. The porn web sites were purely interested the money aspect, as opposed to just the content they were producing. The model that the porn sites established early on, is pretty much the same model that businesses use today. Eventually, many the “.com” businesses failed during the 2001 .com burst, because they didn’t understand how to approach selling their product online. The easier, and faster it is to pay for something the more likely the customer is going to come back.