Although social networking apps mean that some things can be measured, you do end up saying “Hmmm… 5.1 on this scale and 4.3 on that one… Is that good or bad?”

I hope people don’t wake up in 20 years time to find a message on the phone saying “Based on your recent communication patterns we have observed that you are at risk of feeling a little down. Your local NHS trust will be auto-deploying some friends to lift your mood and protect your health.” Or some such!

One thing is for sure… Big changes ahead!

Perhaps we need to develop ways (either personally or technologically) of quantifying the quality of interaction, and factoring that into the way we interact online. Stats are great for mapping breadth or spread, but not so good at more nebulous concepts such as depth… maybe web 3.0 will actually be the humanising of the web, where we stop valuing everything based on a metric, and instead start to think about engagement, social development and how it allows us to make other people’s lives tangibly better, whether through a business interaction, an act of social justice, or just ‘being there’ for people in a way that the virtual world makes possible beyond anything we could have imagined 20 years ago…

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Evolutionary psychology might lead down the path of trying to design around our brain, or design for a tripartite brain. Social psychology might focus us on improving the quality and richness of interactions. We can learn from both approaches, but I think learn we must.

So much technology has been designed without the people who use it in mind – we did what we could rather than what we should. There is an opportunity to change that through better design
and understanding.

I strongly believe that technology can make the world a better place, but we are scoring a 4/10 so far… I there are some exciting years of positive progress ahead.