Frictionless Sharing

I came across this article the other day that talks about a connection between Moore’s Law and online sharing. Similar to the observation made by Gordon Moore in the 1960’s that the number of transistors in every chip will double every two years, the article basically says that every year, the amount of information we share on the internet, through whatever mode we choose, will double yearly.

This was the first time I had ever encountered the term “frictionless sharing”. This allows people to automatically share their everyday experiences should they choose to do so. For instance, a person’s credit card related activities can be automatically shared over the net the moment he enters in to a transaction. With this technology, a person need not take time to access the web and physically share his daily activities, the computer will do it for you. Honestly, I thought this was ridiculous. Its one thing to want the world to know what vegetables you bought at the grocery, but its another to expect other people to care. Fortunately, I thought the author made a compelling statement at the end—Facebook’s impending problem is that even if the company enables future pacemakers to share our every heartbeat, the company cannot automate caring—the most important part of the feedback loop that has driven the social Web's ascent. Nothing can support exponential growth for long. No matter how cleverly our friends' social output is summarized and highlighted for us, there are only so many hours in the day for us to express that we care. Today, the law of social sharing is a useful way to think about the rise of social computing, but eventually, reality will make it obsolete (The Law on Online Sharing by Paul Boutin).

Joni R. Gomez, Entry # 3