Social media

Please humour me while I connect some apparently disconnected ideas here – and let me know what you think.

Popular films such as What The Bleep Do We Know – Down The Rabbit Hole and The Secret discuss the premise that we are all interconnected. Crossover physicists like Fred Alan Wolf and John Hagelin explore this interconnectedness of all things, explaining human consciousness and spirituality in terms of behaviour of matter and energy at the quantum level.

In her book The Field, journalist-turned-author Lynne McTaggart interviewed many respected scientists and physicists about experiments that seemed to point to the existence of the 'Zero Point Field', an energy field that connects every single thing in the universe.

Whether you regard this theory as absolute truth or quantum nonsense, one thing is certain: people want to believe that we each exist not in splendid isolation but as one in this cosmic soup.

We seem to have a need to connect with each other.

Even in the more traditional scientific camp, research physicists continue to pursue and describe a unified theory of everything, a quantum-mechanical theory that encompasses all forces and all matter.

In 1935, Albert Einstein, Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen came up with the idea of quantum entanglement to explain why quantum particles don't have fixed values for their properties until they are observed. Quantum entanglement is the effect in which the quantum states of two or more objects are linked together and must be described with reference to each other, even if the individual objects are spatially separated. Einstein famously called this 'spooky action at a distance'.

When it was finally possible to carry out the physical quantum entanglement experiment in the early 1980s, it was found that indeed there was an instantaneous faster-than-light action at a distance between once-linked photons, and presumably between once-linked particles.

If, as the Big Bang theory proposes, all particles that now exist originated from a common point when the universe began, does that mean all particles in the universe are connected?

As researchers, scientists, metaphysicists and mystics the world over investigate and postulate particle and conscious connectivity, the internet has provided the platform for the explosion of interconnecting phenomena such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and MySpace.

In what we could term 'social entanglement', applications such as Facebook and Twitter enable the mirroring of connectivity behaviours that scientists are investigating, witnessing and trying to understand in the quantum and string world since the early 1900s.

We reach out.

We bond with friends and strangers via status updates, tweets and links. The tendrils of those thoughts and feelings we choose to share spread out and curl around our followers and friends.

We in turn are gripped by the words of those whom we follow and friend.

Our entry into each others' lives is elegant, simple and seamless.

Then we become completely immersed in, and addicted to, mutual dramas, trending topics and what's on our respective breakfast menus.

It seems that via this growing social entanglement, our six degrees of separation are becoming more like six minutes of connectedness, or even six seconds of unification.

Is our intention and desire to become more interconnected with our fellow human beings actually affecting the weird quantum interconnectivity behaviours that physicists are observing?

Or is our growing understanding of the quantum world leading us to realise that we are, in fact, all connected?

Which is the cause, and which is the effect?

What do you think?


Whatever your answer, mind your language (and your thought experiments).

I browse many websites.

I read many blogs.

And I'm definitely a Facebook and Twitter fan.

Via Twitter and Facebook, you can tell your followers and friends what you're doing, thinking or feeling in a particular moment. (A friend of mine once described a tweet as a 'brain fart'.)

Social networking sites are fun. They create a sense of online community and shared interests, and it's exciting to be part of stimulating and ultra-topical e-conversations.

Twitter is a particularly interesting phenomenon.

Many personal development and marketing identities use Twitter's 140-character long update box to share words of wisdom and perspectives on life.

The reason? To offer value to their followers. And they can kill two birds with one stone (sorry, Twitter bird!) by linking their tweets to their Facebook status.

I've found it fascinating to observe how some of the people I follow on Twitter – including some of the personal development 'gurus' – have started to sound like self-important preachers and evangelists.

Is it because of the language they're using?

Or is it me?

Am I not open-minded enough to hear the messages without sermonising overtones?

Am I particularly sensitive and over-exposed?

In fact, I believe it's simply about context.

Many of the great 'quotable quotes' we know and love came from memorable, significant speeches and transformational writings.

Twitter, however, is a 140-character e-pulpit with no room for a background story or how a particular life lesson was learned.

Communicating this way via social networking sites – and via Twitter in particular – is not conducive to providing a context. Of course there's room to include a link to the full story. It just doesn't work in isolation.

These pearls of wisdom have become like annoying rough stones in my shoe.

So I'll just unfollow, unfriend or unplug.

Because of course it's not you. It's me.

What do you think?