Complexity, self-organization and social media in 2009

It’s January 1st, 2009, and many fine folks engaged in the social media world are doing their predictions around what the social media landscape is going to look like. Just off the top of my head I can recall Colleen’s post, Mhairi’s post and Michael’s. Excellent posts, all three and kudos to Colleen, Mhairi and Michael. Honestly, I didn’t want to go and Google the WWW to read more about how social media is going to change in 2009, but I’d recommend you to read these posts from my friends.

Now, back to the topic… There is ONE thing I will tell you, and I’m pretty sure about it – the fluidity of the Internet and social media itself will prevent us from making any accurate predictions of what the social media landscape in 2009 will look like. In other words – if you are making predictions about it, you’re already wrong, even before you start.

There is a whole body of analytical work done around the future (also called Future Studies, or also Futurology). As someone with quantitative training, that’s perhaps one of the things I enjoy the most about mathematical modeling (something I’ve done frequently): some mathematical models allow me to predict future behavior in phenomena. This predictive power increases system stability.

Sadly, the same can’t be done with our good ol’ pal The internet. There is no accurate mathematical (or game-theoretic, or any kind of formal modeling technique) that will tell us what’s going to happen in social media in 2009. Based on our previous experiences in the world of social media (from the various perspectives we have), we can offer trends, suggestions, insights, look for patterns. But seriously, we can’t predict. We can’t make accurate predictions in such a self-organizing, fluid, complex system as the Internet, and more specifically, social media.

Social media is the perfect example of a Complex Adaptive System. It is social (therefore, exhibits network properties), bi-directional (and in the case of connectivity tools like Twitter, multi-directional), multi-scalar (and doesn’t recognize geographical barriers). Moreover, it is complex (as human behavior always is), it is adaptive (as it changes according to responses) and it is systemic.

A while ago, I wrote asking what would Web 3.0 look like. Personally, as someone who doesn’t do social media/tech for a living, I thought that it would include mobile communications. Mhairi mentioned in her post that geo-based tools would stay at the forefront. My sense is that, we won’t exactly know until we’ve seen it. Much as I really dislike that phrase, I think it’s true. We won’t know what 2009’s social media landscape will look like until we are up to our eye-balls in it.

All I’m saying is that, since we can’t predict the Internet and we can’t really predict much about social media, let’s just all enjoy it and take it from there.

For more Complex Adaptive Systems stuff, I’d recommend the website of the Santa Fe Institute.

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