What does the biggest social network share with the most global science field?
Does the most complex web software have anything to do with one of the most complex fields in human nature?
Is Facebook the world’s largest human genetic experiment?
What do you get when you mount a huge amount of human relational information onto the largest, most accessible data depot in the world? Ill tell you what you get…the biggest artificial intelligence in the world (since we are not sure about the universe’s size or the possibility of coexisting multiverse’s).
Lets think about what Facebook contains. On a personal level, it contains:
- Your name, face and personal likes and dislikes.
- Your family’s names, faces and personal preferences as well.
- Your friends’ names, appearance and their preferences.
If you consider that each one of those persons is capable, not only of posting information but also verifying each other’s information and even reproducing in order to create more and more “persons”…You have the biggest genetic tree in the world. This genetic tree doesn’t only have names, but each name has preferences and dislikes, images and moments, work and private information.
Think how much that information is worth to pharmaceutical companies? Facebook may be worth more for the information it contains in its data centers than for its advertising revenue! If Facebook’s highly desirable IPO was poised to skyrocket before, get ready to factor this into it.
PSYCHOLOGY
How much more input do we receive nowadays about, let’s say, how to properly raise a child? How to properly treat a cold? What’s the best way to motivate your employees?
Back in the day, we only got input from 2 or 3 close friends and our parents or siblings. Today we get true, honest advice from 200 friends on at least one topic. Sometimes, depending on how your Facebook account is setup (I don’t allow others to see or post on my posts if they are not strictly my friends – but some people do), we can get 100’s if not 1000’s of comments about a topic.