How do you imagine social interaction within 10 years, taking into consideration the impact of technology on human relations?

Thomas P. Smith – IE MBA Application 2017 – Question J

What is social Interaction?

An interaction does not need to be in person nor even intentional and could be something as small as for example, seeing a Facebook link ‘liked’, noticing that someone is ‘online’ on Whatsapp, or affecting someone’s impression of you by the way you sit (body language). An interaction may or may not be communication, conversation or discussion.u Interaction can describe any process whereby the action of one participant influences the action of

another participant.

u Communication is a specific form of interaction that involves an intentional exchange of information.

u Conversation is a specific form of communication that usually involves natural language.

u Discussion is a specific form of conversation where the participants not only exchange information in the form of language, but do so with the explicit intent to clarify an opinion. The language exchanged is often in the form of arguments.

http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/198152/what-is-the-difference-between-interaction-communication-conversation-and-dis

Social Interaction is the process whereby the action of one human affects the action of another human.

How have the mediums for interaction evolved over time?

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The mediums of interaction have become increasingly complex & digital, and have allowed two or morepeople to interact irrespective of their location (cave, town, country or work/home/transport environment).Some mediums of communication have made previous ones obsolete, while others have been incorporatedinto newer mediums.

We are now able to interact with others on-the-go and instantly wherever there is a network connection, whichis almost everywhere in an OECD country. Photos, documents, music, emojis, movies, fiat money,cryptocurrency, written word, spoken word, approval (likes or shares) of a friend’s opinion/photo/video, andthe moving image of oneself or a movie, can all be exchanged through Handheld devices.

Lowest HighestComplexity of Technology

Movement from Hands to Ears and EyesInteraction with technology is moving from hands (iPhone, Laptop) to virtual ears (Siri, Google Assist, Alexa) to virtual eyes (Snap glasses/Virtual Reality/Augmented Reality). Eyes are the most important real estate on the human body and because of this I believe Augmented Reality & Virtual Reality will mean a movement away from handheld devices such as the Smartphone. Everything will ultimately be on one headset. We will interact with people while information is processed and displayed around us.

The transition to headsets will not be immediate and will likely not begin to happen until closer to 2027. In the coming years, handheld devices with AR applications will prevail and we will see more people holding their device up to “augment” their realty and gain/learn information from the world around them, including people! Virtual reality will certainly change gaming, but it will also change the way we interact with each other, including business meetings and how we socialize from remote locations.

Augmented Reality (Interactions face-to-face)

Imagine walking into a business meeting with a person’s LinkedIn profile & calendar for the remainder of their day/week superimposed over them. Similar situations could be imagined at a party or bar where information from someone’s dating profile is available, or uses for law enforcement where criminal associations are viewable by police offices as someone enters a public building, or children's education where a teacher could explain a topic in a different way based on the child’s learning preferences (displayed around the child by his or her avatar/profile) etc.

Virtual Reality (Interactions not face to face)

“It’s going to be far beyond justgames, we really believe theultimate application for Oculus isactually social communications”– Brendan Iribe, CEO Oculus Rift

People not physically in the same room will be able to see and interact with virtual objects. This has particular benefits for business meetings where a prototype of for example, a movie set design could be altered in real-time by the director in Los Angeles, the set-designer in New York or the audio Engineer in London. The discussion would no longer require them to be in the same room.

VR could make Skype or Facetime obsolete. Two friends could talk with each other and select locations form anywhere in the world. Perhaps Freya in Sweden talks to Carlos in Venezuela, but they select to have the ’location’ for their call to be on a Gondola in Venice. Perhaps Real Madrid will charge one ticket price for watching a game in the Bernabeu Stadium and another price to view the game on a VR headset at home; Freya and Carlos could watch the game together.

Indirect consequences of technology – Polarization

As more information we receive comes from the networks we have built for ourselves like Facebook and LinkedIn, and by the ones that are built for/around us like digital advertising profiles owned by Google, we will increasingly be open to a narrower sphere of influence.

For example, of the 1000+ ‘friends’ on my Facebook feed, there is only one who posts supporting arguments for Donald Trump. Not all of the 999+ others post regularly, but no other person makes supporting posts. I’m therefore, almost without exception, only aware of negativity for him, yet 50% of the USA voted for him and I have almost zero access to their opinions. It’s a similar ratio on my LinkedIn feed.

As people go more digital they can better filter out the noise that doesn't ‘agree with them’, this is great for efficiency (in terms of adverts) and harmony (in terms of political vocalists), but it leads to polarization of the information we have access to and therefore to more homogeneous thought.

In a less digital age, there was still selection of magazines, books, news channels, and social circles in which to move, but there was far more haphazard access to different opinions too. In the digital age, filtering is just too easy, and I feel that this is not a great thing. A divided society isn’t really a society, it’s two worlds coexisting.

As driverless cars are implemented, amazon drones start delivering goods to our houses cheaply, and more classes are taught via the internet, the need to interact (physically in the same location) with taxi drivers, shop assistants, and professors diminishes. The full effects of this will not be felt by 2027 and it will be a gradual chance, the effects of which to the human psyche are hard to accurately predict, but it could lead to interaction becoming more planned and therefore more filtered.

Predictions for the Next 10 yearsu Interactions in the same physical location will become less important for business meetings.

u The death of the office will not occur within ten years, but more and more people will work from home because they can do so without loosing the productivity or the social aspects of the office (e.g. designing a movie set).

u Virtual Reality makes remote social meetings among friends more fun – People can explore virtual (like star wars) or semi-virtual (a Real Madrid game or a trip to Venice) worlds together.

u People physically meeting you for the first time will have access to a virtual avatar. Information about yourself that you have choose to make available to augmented reality applications (dating profiles at bars or LinkedIn profiles in meetings).

u Closer to 2027, people will move from handheld devices to wearing headsets and they will interact with these headsets through voice commands and eye movements.

u Polarization of ideas: social networks will not be as effected by the coming technological changes as other businesses, but the effect of an increasingly digital world could lead to polarization of political thinking.

u Less haphazard interactions with strangers as technology automates roles currently filled by humans – leads to more filtering of influence.