ORCM Architecture Model Transcendence, part 3

ORCM Architecture Model Transcendence, part 3: Diffusion-based limitations override

(source: http://erelations.info/orcm-architecture-model-part-3/)

Relations created online have some advantages over «offline» relations, at least in a business context. Such an advantage is the massive scale of a message dissemination.

Whereas in the early stages of the history of humanity a message could be distributed to more than one person it was difficult to do and involved someone to write the message (most people could not write since they did not have the required education), someone to deliver the message (sometimes you also needed a horse, donkey or a damn camel), as well as someone to read it (most people could not read). It also involved material resources and in most cases it stopped right there (there were no Costco or Staples to sell you 10,000 pages + printer bundles back then, remember?). All those factors combined contributed to a fairly limited level of message distribution, which progressed quickly when large numbers of people gained access to education, printing methods were developed, etc.

But there were still many limitations to large-scale message distribution. Those limitations are to a large degree abolished now on a worldwide scale. This is mainly because with the advent of online communications you still need someone to write the message (most people can write since they possess the required education), someone to deliver the message (all you need is a pc, smartphone, etc.), as well as someone to read it (most people can read, although they may not be «at the same level»). It does not involve much material resources, since all those great businesses have put in place cloud-based IT infrastructures so all you guys may write and propagate all sorts of content through their servers and application interfaces, email servers and social networks, this mostly with no charge, which is of course wonderful!

The downfall of the democratization of the writing process is that your piece about socio-politically derived gender-influenced perception of Dali's works may be lost in a massive influx of information from which it will appear as no more than a drop lost in a sea of not particularly significant data (marketers will at this point roll their eyes will muttering «SEO», but that's another story altogether on which countless posts were already devoted). Think of it this way: if there were millions of papyrus scattered around the earth and you could pick some from the trash around the corner (or buy a thousand papyrus for 11.99$ from you-know-where), most likely nobody would care about this one piece of papyrus, right? So the staggering numbers of posts, blogs, tweets and various electronic pieces of literature do cause a loss of uniqueness; no one really cares about a particular, individual electronic writing unless it combines several factors such as significance, being directed towards a particular niche, excellent writing skills, etc. The overall quality of a post may then increase its potential for persistence in the cosmic cloud of Web-based I/O (input/output) interactions.

But one particular trait of capitalistic societies (which is fine overall, of course) is to capitalize (duh!) on any activities of said society. Online communications are no exception to this rule, even more so in recent years with millions of new users having gained access to the Net (that means a huge market share is potentially available). In order to profit from this increase in online population content will be created for the specific purpose of generating interest for brands and products. For the content to be seen by a significant number of folks, techniques & methods will be developed to trick search engines to consider as significant something that would otherwise be discarded as spam or insignificant. There you have it: content quality will be lost to the power of money. And with more and more bots pushing product/brand-based generic content on blogs/social networks through automated processes there is a risk that social media will lose some of its potential for communicating, interacting and sharing precious knowledge with others. You know, the «social» part of social media? Or we could re-label all that brand media...

Well like they say, 'nough said: that's it for your fave blog series; we will leave the ORCM Architecture Model Transcendence trilogy on this apocalyptic note.