The first stage of a technological revolution consists of using the new tool at our disposal to carry out what has been done up to that point. Paradoxically, change is above all what supports continuity. From the margins of society or the public at large, new uses then emerge, expressing the modernity and the possibilities specific to the new technology.

Many initially considered the Internet as a novel means of broadcasting, rather than an end in itself. It was viewed as a simple extension, an exotic diversification, or even a futuristic department of companies in the press, radio, publishing, music, or movie industries.

The Internet's strength, particularly in networking, soon became apparent. At this stage, we may summarise what we have learned thus far:

• The Internet creates a new resource : its users' collective intelligence:

  Harnessing this collective intelligence is the key to mass success on the Internet.

  A concept coined by Pierre Levy, collective intelligence means all the information, volontary or not, provided by the users which enrich, grow, and expand the network.

  There would be no Google without rankings that reflect, from a user perspective, a given site's popularity and relevance. There would be no eBay without user-generated ratings of the sellers' reputations. There would be no profitable Amazon without product recommendations from other users having a complementary shopping basket. The same goes for Wikipedia, Digg, YouTube, Skyblog, FaceBook, Bebo, MySpace, Flickr...

  Collective intelligence is an unrivalled source of information (if only for its speed), resources, values, ideas, possibilities and speed.

  It is to our century what oil was to the previous one. Integrating the network's collective intelligence has transformed companies and all levels of society;

• The Internet has created a new form of distribution : peer-to-peer networks:

  In this system, each machine is simultaneously a client (ie, receiver) and a server (or transmitter). It can even serve as a router and arrange the order in which messages are delivered.

  Napster, followed by KaZaA and BitTorrent, demonstrate the extraordinary disruptive power wielded by this form of distribution when used by the masses;

• The Internet has created a new medium: conversation:

  The Internet is not just another means of broadcasting like television and radio. It is revolutionising the age of broadcasting by permitting social networking via electronic exchange.

  Internet has exploded the vertical top-down model that formerly characterised broadcasting, in favour of a horizontal interactive structure where the power to broadcast belongs to everyone. Broadcasting is no longer monologue but dialogue. Internet's fundamental power is conversation.

  More than ever, our opinions on just about any matter, like our purchases are formed through comments, experiences, ideas, shared on the Internet, where the term "content" seems inadequate as no container can keep it in bounds. In contrast to analogic content, Internet "Content" is more precisely a collection of sources that have been aggregated and remixed by users. The upstream filtering by editors is replaced by downstream filtering carried out by users. Popular opinion prevails, and is often seen as more credible than an institutional body or commercial organisation. People are the new media. The new culture is one of participation.

• The Internet reinforces individual emancipation:

  Metcalfe's law states that the value of a computer is proportional to the number of machines to which it is connected. This law also applies to people: the potential and the emancipation of an individual are proportional to the number of people to whom that person is connected. This new power relationship in favour of networked individuals is changing every part of society: the family, schools, companies, politics, our relationship with experts, doctors, media, products and brands. A revolution of this magnitude has precedents in the invention of printing and mass literacy.

• With the Internet the code becomes a medium:

  The software code is becoming an online service, i.e., a page of results generated by a search engine or a webmail site. This service is financed by advertising in the form of commercial links. Generating an audience and advertising revenues, the service is by definition media. Consequently, Google is the first media company in the world, even though it produces no actual content apart from code.

• With the Internet advertising becomes demassified:

  Advertising is moving away from traditional targeting criteria of age, sex, income or level of education, to individual data collected about users based on their Internet activity;

• With the Internet interruptive advertising is replaced by advertising that is integrated or peripheral:

  In contrast to the advertising break practised by traditional media, Internet advertisements are merged with the source or exist alongside the users' experience

• With the Internet anything which is not local is global:

  The code is global. The Internet is globalising software competition, standardising the types of use and the markets.

Those were just a few ideas. Now, to better understand social networks, let's go back in time and examine the two applications that helped Internet take off with the general public : e-mail for personal exchanges and World Wide Web for accessing information.

Accessing information via the network of sites gave birth to meta-information: in other words, information about information, like Yahoo! or even Alta Vista. We access information via meta-information. It's the traffic model used by portals and of course by search engines.

With regard to e-mail, the meta-information (information about e-mail addresses and the network/s of those connected) has developed rapidly with what we now refer to as "social networking" Internet social networks are services offering relational productivity (industrializing the creation or production of social relations) through the networking of ideas and individual expression.

Users rely on this service to strengthen ties with close friends and family, and also to forging new relationships.

E-mail addresses are the basis of one's digital identity on the Internet. Profiles or blogs that one maintains as part of an online social network add a new dimension to this identity. A social network thus offers the creation of an expanded digital identity in order to increase the relevance of new relational connections.

As platforms supporting their members' network of online relationships, social networks integrate all the tools used in electronic dialogue: delayed messaging, instant messaging, direct messaging, forums, VoIP and so on.

Expanding digital identity is essential for improving the overall quality of the networking experience. Each new or additional characteristic of one's being, via text, image or sound, facilitates expression and understanding in order to strengthen existing relationships and/or forge new ones.

At the network's centre is the individual. Improvements in social technology (eg: new functionalities) solely serve to optimize individual relational productivity within an ever-expanding social network.

These improvements, in turn, help to optimize or fine-tune search functions, which therefore offer new opportunities for growing one's social network via additional affinity-based relations.

Viewing the social network as an extension of email, and digital identity within a social network as central to all of one's online interactions, the following conclusion may be drawn:

the social network is the future of telecommunications.

As we know, the past decade has proved to be a watershed period for telecommunications firms.

With the Internet, value is shifting from network exploitation (ie, traditional work of the telecommunications operator) to software that handles exchanged information. Otherwise stated, value is shifting to pure programming code.
Profitability margins for providing network access are diminishing as competitors are reduced to slashing tariffs in pricing wars, with few other options in sight.

By contrast, as codes achieve critical user mass, they prove less interchangeable and thus more valuable. Changing Internet providers is easier than, for example, going from Outlook to Thunderbird or from Gmail to Hotmail.

The value of telecommunications is being transferred from the bandwidth to code. This code will become tomorrow's social network.

To fully realise this vision we must rely on the evolution of the mobile phone.

The mobile phone is rapidly evolving into a pocket-sized Internet terminal.

The new generations' intensive cell phone use sparked this evolution: the terminal ensures permanent connection to other people, always on and always with you. Physical identity and digital identity are now merged.

What is the software bridge between online social networking and this mobile terminal? The instant messenger.

Indeed, the social network is an exchange platform, just like instant messenger. Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo Messenger or Google Talk were destined to become the crossroads for all exchanges.

On the small mobile terminal screen, the web experience has no appeal whatsoever. On the other hand, a messenger, with extended functionalities, unlimited information and social network interactivity, is the ideal interface.

The instant messenger is the interface for accessing the social network via mobile terminals.

It is also clear that the mobile terminal, certainly for the new generation, will in the future be the main access terminal for accessing one's social network. The messenger initiated from the mobile will thus be the primary interface access to their network.

The social network, via the instant messenger intermediary, concentrates the value of interpersonal exchanges via mobile terminals.

It's the main interface of mobile telephony for the future.

The messenger which we are talking about here is several generations away (just a medium-term prospect) from existing messengers. It adds relational depth to all contacts, on top of concentrating and organising incoming/outgoing communications, (whatever be their nature). Above all, it gives users complete control over their exchanges. It is the merger of a service like GrandCentral with SM, Skyrock's own messenger service.

On the other hand, bridges are clearly open between social networks, and permit the latter to exchange information among themselves, like the agreements concluded between competing instant messaging services.

As a telecommunications interface, the social network links individuals with their close ones, comprising the main body of our dialogue and our emotional capital. Social networks demonstrate the importance of dialogue in the group constituting one's closest contacts, such as updates about activities and jokes.

What knows more about what I'm doing, what I'm looking at, what I'm listening to, who I'm talking to and where I am than the machine on which which I carry out these activities? This permanent dialogue, creating a collective micro-conscience will likely develop from the direct link between machines. We can assume that software will exploit this flow of information to optimise the activities and links. This will involve integrating the social network into the machine and its exploitation system. We can imagine Apple or Microsoft launching a future initiative in this area, by creating a service or integrating an existing service.

The Internet terminal or IP terminal is also a revolution in itself, offering a permanent connection at the best bandwidth, available at any given time, from GSM to WiMAX mobile, with no hassle.

It is our personal point of access to the Internet, and thus to social networks for interpersonal exchanges, via a search engine adapted to provide access to information

The phone's diminutive screen and keyboard are no limiting factors. The phone can be connected to just about any hi-tech machine, and then use the annexed machine, and all its peripherals, as a resource and gain in power. It's quite similar to the way that an iPod takes control of the hi-fi system to which it is connected. All types of software already allow this operation, such as MojoPac.

So the little device basically takes over the big one. Indeed, what dominates others is the one that resembles us the most.

At the same time, the melding together of PCs and mobile phones may be understood within the larger range of "n play" products (convergence) combining, into a single billing account, television, Internet, as well as fixed and mobile telephony. Nothing prevents from factoring into this equation the home server, high-speed Internet access, the screen in front of the sofa and the home Wi-Fi connection.

The (trans)portability of one's network, enabled by mobile phone technology, potentially has the same power as a server and behave like one. The IP terminal's power is radically transforming the rules of the game.

Today, we have primary services hosted by leased servers to which user (or client) PCs are connected. In this system, online services are hosted on clusters of servers which share the work among themselves. Those services can be accessed via Internet by the final users.

Now, let's just imagine that a future where there are no longer any PCs but only servers. Imagine that the vast majority of these individual servers are mobile devices -- in other words, mobile servers.

For users, these mobile servers still operate like traditional terminals (even phone calls are possible!), but also function as servers performing distributed tasks, or co-host online services.

In this scenario, server farms become an aggregate of terminals belonging to the public at large.

Such modes of distributing calculations already exist and have proven their effectiveness, from Seti@home yesterday to the software provider Hadoop today. They make it possible to distribute tasks and data across thousands of basic, disparate and autonomous machines, some of which will break down, or be added or removed from the network at any moment.

Furthermore, this distribution mode may be reinforced by an additional network of transmitter-receivers (i.e., the mesh network, which has proven to be very robust). The operating principle is found in Fon, which transforms every Wi-Fi user into a transmit-receive network hub.

Projections of this sort help to redefine the debate opposing the machine-centric vision of PC operating systems and online technologies based on distant exploitation. This debate will disappear as terminal software is merged with distance software. The operating system bound to individual machines will become an operating system as part of a server.

By the same token, the operating system for the PC and for the mobile terminal are destined to become nothing more than two versions of the same software or may even merge. The operating system for mobiles will likely become dominant because, once again, it is the system used by the device that is closest to us.

Adequate control of the Hertzian network is the key to this deployment and the major Internet players are of course interested.

In the future, companies could conceivably replace all or some of their leased servers by subsidising individual mobile servers aimed at the general public and used by people as terminals and phones. In exchange, companies gain privileged access to user-generated information, correlated for example to their GPS position or to their method of payment, whose integration into the terminal is foreseeable.

Another main key to the successful dissemination of servers is the software that coordinates this dynamic aggregation of machines. Again, the key is the code.

These anticipations underscore the importance of social networks, enriching collective intelligence in its synergy of humans and machines into a functional unit.

There you have the future of telecommunications. There you have the future of social networks.

Pierre Bellanger. 2007/09/02

http://www.skyrock.fm/bellanger/#english