Social Software & Skype: Regaining Human Contact and Wholeness

The Gospel according to John begins with the text that has shaped the modern world - "In the beginning was the word". Our world is based on not only "The Book" but on a host of Books. This reliance on the "Word" has sublimated the most powerful part of our intelligence, our innate common sense. We have given up our individual power and the power of our communities to "Experts".

Why did this happen? I think because text allowed us to break the bonds of time and space for communication beyond its natural setting a community of about 35 people. Text allowed us to have a society larger than a tribe. The problem is that this cheap tool comes with a price. The price is that over time, by by shrinking human communication bandwidth, we stop being human and we destroy the context for being human which is to live in the context of a small community.

Millions of years of living in tribal settings of between 8-35 have hardwired us to thrive in a special type of community. This is our natural scale. Text has enabled us to break free of this scale limit. While it has brought physical comfort It has brought these goods and physical comfort a terrible social and spiritual agony.

Can we find a way of living in the big world while keeping our comforts but also find again the vital context for a good spiritual life, a tribally scaled community? I think that we can and I think that Social Software and the network will provide this answer.

The core issue is to find a method of communicating that enables vast scale but also intimacy. Such a communication tool has by definition to be very cheap - free would be best. For the problem of scale and communication is that "real" communication is very expensive.

Real communication uses the full bandwidth of human contact. It is not merely the word but the tone. It is not merely the sound but the expression of the face and the movement of the body. Even this is not enough. Real communication demands a pre-existing high level of trust. This medium of trust can only come from a pre-existing healthy community. In the context of community, communication demands that each participant bring their full self to the conversation. For such communication is always a dialogue. All the information that we access to communicate richly in this full bandwidth is processed by our limbic, or mammal part of the brain. This part of our brain does not use reason but pattern. More later.

Text in comparison is a one-way transmission and uses only a very narrow channel in the full spectrum of the available human communication bandwidth. It also uses a fragile & loosely rooted part of our mind that is based on reason. The rational mind is located in part of the brain that is great for planning but not for much else. They found in the first world war that we can lose large parts of our neo-cortex and live quite productive lives. If we lose parts of our our limbic brain, we become socially incapable. if we lose our reptilian brain we die immediately.

When I say fragile and loosely rooted I mean that being a tool for planning and hence argument, reason is by definition not rooted in experience. We actually don't use it much for important things. If we use it for say driving or fighting, it is too slow. If we have to think, we will have an accident or get killed in combat. We have to hard wire this information into our pattern brain - the limbic brain. The process is experience not cognition. Reason is very slow process. It is also not a process that we use in reality for really important decisions anyway. We don't use it to choose a mate, a house, a job or even do a big deal. We may retro-validate the choice by reason. But we sure don't make these important decisions by reason. Yet we exalt reason and the expert and place both above our innate intelligence and experience.

The religions of the "Book" have been the energy for so much conflict. The text-based rules of bureaucracies have been the origin of so much pain and insensitivity. This is how the Holocaust happened. This is why government no longer serves us but only itself. Our focus in education on a text based rationality has condemned the majority of people to a life of the underclass and bondage. We no longer know how to raise our children, so we read the latest book by an expert. We no longer know how to love another so we read a book by an expert. We no longer know what foods are healthy so we read a book by an expert. We have forgotten how to learn so we give up our lives to experts called teachers. We have forgotten how to entertain our selves so that we have given up this work to experts called stars or professional sports players. We have lost touch with our lives so we give up our health to addictions and then to experts called doctors and drug companies. We no longer have any confidence to act collectively so we give our power to politicians and to demagogues. We have forgotten the ancient wisdom of the spirit and so we have given up our souls to experts called priests.

We forgot that our own spiritual leader advised us to "Consider the lilies in the field" What he meant is that all living things have the requisite intelligence to have good lives. But we have given up our innate selves and intelligence to others. We have given them up to the "word and those that create them. In so doing we have become not only miserable but have taken our world to the edge of a catastrophe.

Might it be our passion for the "Word", for reason, for therefore for the win/lose debate and conflict of text based positions be the poison that has taken away our full intelligence? Has it taken away from us our humanity? Has it made us into a type of Zombie? Have we become autistic beings that mouth the words of relationships and humanity but who are incapable of being human with everyone - not the least with ourselves. After all, who is it that beats us up at 3am? Who is it that makes us uncertain about being parents, partners and trusted colleagues? Who has told us that all we need to learn comes from a text? Who exhausts us with the endless chatter and fear? By disconnecting us from ourselves who else are we disconnected from? Not only from every other human, but from every animal and also from nature itself.

I believe that our reliance on the "Word" has created a great loneliness and isolation. Until the last 200 years, most people lived a human life where their relationships were based on their "essential wholeness". Our intelligence stemmed from every part of us. All work involved a combination of the mind and body. Today we have divided work into two clases. Those whose work uses only the mind and those whose work uses only their body. In so doing we have lost who we are. By separating the body and the mind, we have stopped being human.

How did this happen? How did we lose our complete selves? I believe that it paradoxically it has been the adoption of the written word and latterly the advent of mass literacy that has quashed the limbic part of our brain, crushed our intuition, banished our body and separated us from the natural world. While economic prosperity has risen our spiritual unhappiness has increased. Increased now to a point of crisis.

The "word" in the shape of advertising and spin has become central to how we work the economy. As a result, we are now bombarded with messages. So much so that we can barley hear anything through the noise. Hence the the insight of Cluetrain - that markets are conversations. Hence the insight of Joe Trippi as he worked on the Dean campaign. We are desperate to have a conversation in politics again. The word has been reduced to noise.

I am beginning to understand that our reliance on the "Word", in particular the "Word as Text" may be at the root of the social, environmental and personal tragedy of our times. Julian Jaynes in his incomparable book "The origins of consciousness in the breakdown of the bicameral mind (I am fully aware of my own paradox in writing these words and in citing texts) points out that we can trace the disappearance of the voice of the Gods (our intuition) as the written word replaced the oral tradition. A growing focus on the written word enhanced the rational brain at the expense of the Limbic brain and thus to our ability to exist as fully developed humans. We have become shadow people like the folks in Plato's cave who only see a poor reflection instead of real life. Those to whom the Gods speak today we call mad.

So what is the road home? It surely cannot be made by an act of will. Just we we became influenced by the the experience of the "Word", I believe that we can only find our humanity again by experiencing what it feels like to be in true community with ourselves and with others. No amount of clever words by me or any other prophet can help. We have to go out of the cave and experience the real world for ourselves. No amount of telling those back in the cave will convince them that we are right. They too have to leave the cave and experience another form of reality.

So if a new communication technology, the written word and then the printing press has taken humanity to this place. What is the way back? Surely the adoption of another new set of communication technology that offers more bandwidth.

My growing intuition is that we live at the brink time when our inhuman focus on the rational and the Word is at the heart of most of what appear to be insoluble problems. The issue with education is not acquiring literacy by drumming it into us but identity and engagement with learning. The issue with health is not access to healthcare but identity and engagement with community. The issue with our economy is not more efficiency but again identity and engagement with those that we serve. The issue with the natural world is not conservation but our lack of identity and engagement with the natural world. Our bodily failings and addictions are not about lifestyle choices but our loss of personal identity and engagement with true ourselves.

Paradoxically just as we stand on such a brink, relief is in sight. I am convinced that the full range of social software is the class of new technology that has the power to reconnect us again in the full terms of being human. Where we are no longer linked by the winning text but in dialogue. Where we agree not only with a small part of our brain but with our whole selves. Social Software has the power to offer us almost all the the requisite bandwidth and the critical context - community.

This sense has been growing in me for the last three years as I blogged. But my epiphanic moment came yesterday as I talked with Johnnie Moore on Skype. This was my road to Damascus moment. "Then I looked into a glass darkly - now I see myself face to face!"

Johnnie Moore and I have been trying Skype. I also talked with Dina yesterday in Bombay. I have found that you have to try it to understand why people like Stuart Henshall have become such believers.

The quality is so good that I can hear a large part of the emotional state of the other in their voice and their voice pattern. The spirit is in our breath. Our breath is I find an indication of our spirit. When we ask a friend "How are you?' The tone of their response rather than the word themselves tells us all. A problem for the modern world is that most of us listen only to the words. One of my favourite authors, Malcolm Gladwell has a new book coming out on this topic. called Blink - Thinking Without Words

So with Skype, the human value of the contact is very high. When you combine this with the low cost - essentially free - and the social context of community, the core aspect of prior blogging, you really "meet" the other person. All that is missing is the face and with IChat we are close to that as well. Tiger will allow conference calls on viddeo. Skype allows conference calls on voice. It is inevitable that in 3 years, we will be as fully present over time and distance as we could be in person. We would miss only the pheromone channel. Most of human bandwidth will be available. The cost will be in effect free. Blogging provides the context of community.

Text alone will lose its power over us. The "Word" will no longer be enough.

So what does this mean for me and maybe for you? I think that it means that we are truly seeing that time and space as barriers to relationships are being nullified.

I think that this type of technology, combined with other aspects of Social Software, are offering us a the potential of a re-awakening of a human society based on the full power of our many aspects of intelligence, our intuition, our experience, our emotions, our common sense, ritual, art, our dreams and our bodies. I am beginning to suspect that our over reliance on the written word, on reason and on the critical part of our brain has been a blind alley leading to the closure of most that makes us wonderful and human. This is quite a statement so here are some supporting thoughts that have taken me to this conclusion.

What Social Software means to me is that I can find people from a sample as large as the world. Blogging can enable us to find the values and interest fit. VOIP then extends this to the next level where true human contact can take place in the world of gossip

What do we as humans naturally need to keep us happy and healthy? What is society? What is intelligence are some the underlying questions.

Until the advent of language maybe 100,000 years ago, social bonding had to take place in the same time and space. Robin Dunbar's great thesis on the development of language suggest that it was Grooming that kept us healthy and OK in social hierarchies. Language enables humans to expand their ability to interact with each over distance and hence to expand the amount of work and tribe could accomplish.

The development of writing was the huge next breakthrough. This enabled information to be transmitted beyond time and place. But the development of the written word has I believe carried with it a terrible social cost. What cost? The "word" is not interactive. It is a one way channel. It depends on power of expertise. Using the power of expertise or credential, it drives steep hierarchies. I think that it has led to the over development of the critical part of our brain and to the development of the critical ego. It has led to us losing the ability to access our intuition and all the self-knowledge contained in groups. It enables us to link into the Wisdom of Crowds.

Social Software expands the bandwidth of communication over time and place to include a human voice in text and in tone in the context of a known community.

I am constantly asked by people to explain the difference between say blogging and email. I think that the difference is this. Email is a socially free text tool with almost no human bandwidth that enables us to bombard other with "words". Email is not about interaction it is a messaging service. Social Software is a tool that enables a human dialogue. It is interactive in that provides context as well as the choice to engage in a dialogue.

Email has volts but no amps. Social Software has both Volts and Amps. The human voice is expensive in effort as it demands that we put off our Zombie armor and reveal our true selves. It is our true self that provides the amps. Conversation becomes engaging when we open ourselves up and reveal not our frontal lobe but our fill self. The Amps come from our heart. We can feel it when we are real - I feel a force coming from my heart. Don't you?

So a society that is more and more densely connected by networks of the heart allows us to replicate our hunter gatherer hard wiring but in the modern context of the world that we live in today. It opens up the most important part of our brain the mammal brain of relationships. This is the doorway for all that we know and do - not the rational word based brain.