Social media and mass data analytics are just tips of the iceberg in terms of the impact these types of technology can have on society (for better or worse) Fr

Social media and mass data analytics are just tips of the iceberg in terms of the impact these types of technology can have on society (for better or worse) From these beginnings we have seen a rise in mass groups of people organising behaviours in cohesion even despite the rudimentary interface of keyboard, camera and screen, and going out on a bit of a limb viewed from above it operates like a group brain or gestalt entity. In that view we've seen the birth in recent decades a form of aggregate intelligence that hasn't existed before in history except perhaps crude and 1-way through newspapers and television propaganda. One can imagine a platform using real time analytics, more deeply integrated into people's thinking and behaviours, that can be set to more productive goals than targeted content, advertising, and disinformation, and that may be driven less by central authority and more by the will of the collective, as weird as that sounds I can't see how it's not a possible future. Again for better or worse I don't think we've seen the end of what we call "social media" and its ilk, and I think despite efforts to control it, there is a good chance for some upset to the status quo as further iterations of the technologies become more ingrained and capable and exert greater influence on the various forces and tensions in the world. Or not, who knows, weird times we're living in.