How can technology further enhance social interaction?
Serendipity: A “happy accident” or “pleasant surprise”; specifically, the accident of finding something good or useful without looking for it or being able to link together apparently innocuous facts to come to a valuable conclusion.
We’re all familiar with the concept even though we may not know the exact definition. Serendipitous encounters rarely occur in real life but are common plot lines in movies like Serendipity & Benjamin Button which feature chance meetings between two or more people years after their first meeting. Up until last year only movie plot lines could show us the missed opportunities or near misses that exist all around us every day but can’t see.
With the combination of mobile GPS and Social Discovery applications we now will be able to actually see “What we have been missing” all these years. The seemingly randomness of chance meetings and missed opportunities can now be served-up via mobile apps like Intro, Sonar, Glancee, Banjo, Localmind and Foursquare just to name a few to hit the market last year. These mobile applications use the GPS data from your phone or Social Network (Friends & Interests) to connect you with people and products or services that you would have normally missed. Each Social Discovery application focuses on a specific type of discovery such as (Intro) for business opportunities, (Glancee & Banjo) for personal relationships and (Localmind & Foursquare) for commercial products & services. Having so many options makes it difficult to choose the right one that fits you, but over time the industry leaders will emerge.
Consider the following: You’re at an event and someone considered to be a common contact in your social network (a friend of a friend of a friend) is within 50 meters and you both are identified as having common interests but have never met previously, this is a connection that would be a suggested match. Pairing up the common connections or interests such as friends, twitter feeds, professional services offered and even products & services that you are looking for are resolved by a background process performed by the social discovery application.
Having the ability to make a connection to someone or something that exists just outside of your normal scope of everyday life can truly enrich one’s life. In order for this technology to work, however, it must also align with the human condition. Some present their lives as open books and invite the world in while others prefer not to so the option must be given to the user as to when and how much is shared with others. So far, reviews have been mixed with the new technology mostly due to concerns over privacy, but as the technology evolves I believe the benefits will outweigh the cons. Whichever you are, there is no denying the power behind the concept.
Contributor, designer & admin for JohnHart Gazette.
