It doesn’t even have to be a perceived miscarriage of justice that triggers riots. In 2011 another riot exploded in Vancouver in response to the outcome of the Stanley Cup ice hockey final when the Canucks lost to the Boston Bruins, sparking a flurry of rioting and looting. Canadians take their ice hockey very seriously!
Harvard’s Nicholas Christakis says that when you take a bird’s eye view of humans through the prism of social networks, the picture of both the individual and the group changes.2 He draws the analogy with graphite and diamonds. Both materials are made of carbon atoms but it is the way these individual atoms are connected that determines why one material is soft and dark and the other is hard and clear. The layered lattice arrangement of graphite carbon atoms means that it shears easily whereas the highly interconnected arrangement of diamond carbon atoms means that it is as hard as – well, diamonds of course. Therefore, when it comes to carbon atoms, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Similarly, understanding the individual self only really makes sense in terms of the groups to which they are connected. To extend the carbon metaphor, when we are well connected we are more resilient because there is safety and strength in numbers. Alone, we are more vulnerable and weaker.
The mechanisms for joining groups are not completely random. We all possess individual differences that mean we join some groups and not others. There are strong historical, geographic and physical factors at play. We tend to form friendships and associate with others who represent our culture, live close by, resemble us and with whom we can easily connect.3 We also form friendships with those who share the same interests and worldviews. We tend to like those who resemble us physically. For example, obese people are more likely to hang out with other obese people and the friends of obese people.4 If one friend is overweight, there is a 45 per cent increased likelihood above chance that the other friend will also be overweight. If you are the friend of a friend who has another overweight buddy, then your likelihood is going to be 25 per cent above chance. This is known as ‘homophily’ – the tendency for bird’s of a feather to flock together, for like to be attracted to like. Only by the time the relationship is a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend has the link to obesity disappeared.
Homophily can arise for various reasons such as shared external environments or interests. National identity, religious beliefs, team allegiances or music fans are examples of homophilic groups resulting from external factors. There is nothing genetic about being a British, Christian, Manchester Utd supporter who likes Dolly Parton. More surprising, however, is the recent discovery of genetic factors in homophily in social groupings. It has long been known that good-looking people tend to hang out with each other and that looks are partly genetic, but a recent study by Christakis and colleagues has shown that genes associated with behavioural traits are also related to friendship formation.5 For example, one gene, DRD2, associated with the disposition to alcoholism, was found to predict homophily in clusters of friends whereas another, CYP2A6, linked with openness, surprisingly produced the opposite effect of heterophily – the tendency to associate with others where there are no shared interests (‘opposites attract’). The causal mechanisms by which genes might exert this influence on behaviour is unclear and investigation of the genetic factors implicated in social networking is in its early days, but the discovery that genes operate in social environments means that we have to rethink the extent to which our biology influences our behaviour.
The Technology Savannah
Technology is changing the way we communicate and this is going to have an impact on the way we behave socially. Specifically, social networking may have very significant consequences for the way we develop. Our human mind, which was forged and selected for group interaction on the Serengeti, is now expected to operate in an alien environment of instant communication with distant, often anonymous individuals. Our face-to-face interaction that was so finely tuned by natural selection is largely disappearing as we spend more time staring at terminal screens that were only invented a generation ago. The subtle nuance of an intonation of voice or a facial micro-expression6 is lost in this new form of communication. The physicality of interaction is disappearing, which may be something to which we will need to adapt. But ultimately, it will change the way we assemble our sense of self because of the influence of groups. Even if this turns out not to be correct, we would be wise to give these new technologies some careful consideration as they have the potential to have profound effects on the way we live.
For some time now, man has had the capability to shape his own future. With our capacity to communicate and our ability to form societies, we hand down knowledge from one generation to the next. We have used this communication to develop technologies such as writing. With the advent of science, most of us in modern societies have been freed from the shackles of hostile environments and hard times. Civilization has enabled humans to take control of processes that used to whittle out the weak. In the distant past, natural selection ensured that the old, the sick and the infertile lost out in the mating game. This has been changed by technological innovation. Modern medicine, with its fertility treatments and healthcare, has shifted the goal posts. Of course, natural selection will always be with us, but we can use our science to outwit its relentless cull of the least suited. Human development is increasingly shifting away from natural selection to Lamarckian inheritance – the idea, named after the French biologist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, that we can change our selves while we are still alive and pass on the benefits of that change to our children by tailoring their environments. It’s not clear how we will continue to evolve, but science and technology seems unlimited in their ingenuity to bend the rules. Similarly, our technologies and advances in communication through the Web will forever shape the future of humankind in ways that are not yet clear. One thing that is certain is that the Web will influence our sense of self as we increasingly live our lives online, as members of virtual groups.
I remember when the Web first emerged. I had just arrived at MIT’s Department of Brain and Cognitive Science in the autumn of 1994 as a visiting scientist. I was checking email in the computer room where Zoubin Ghahramani and Daniel Wolpert, two brilliant young scientists, were getting excited about Netscape, one of the first Web browsers that had just sent through some image files to Zoubin’s terminal. The internet had already been in existence for years to allow academics and the military to exchange emails but the invention of HTML (the Web programming language) provided the first opportunity to share more than just text. This was my first encounter with the Web. In the past, people could email you files directly but now anyone with the right address could visit and view material on a remote website. It was like creating something permanent in the electronic landscape that others could come and visit well after you were gone – almost like the virtual immortality of scratching a mark on an electronic wall for others to find. As nerdy scientists, that afternoon we all recognized the importance of this capacity to share remote information, but I doubt any of us fully understood its potential power.
The subsequent rise and spread of the Web into everyone’s lives has been astonishing for those of us who remember the pre-Web days but my daughters seem oblivious because they have grown up with the rapid change of pace today and assume it has always existed. I tell my own children that they are living during one of the major transitions in human civilization, that humankind is currently in the midst of the next great evolutionary leap. This sort of statement may sound sensationalist. It may sound nostalgic as some of us hanker for simpler times. It may even sound like the curmudgeonly grumblings of a middle-aged dad who laments that, ‘Things were different in my day.’ Indeed, every generation probably says this, but I cannot overstate this transition too much. I think that most of us are sleepwalking into uncharted territory. We need not fear it. It is one of most exciting times to be alive in the history of humankind.