Imagining global space, part 1

The world’s most populous metropolitan area is Tokyo, with around 35 million people. That’s comparable to California, the most populous US state. Texas, the number two state with 24.3 million citizens, is slightly larger than Seoul and Mexico City (with 20.5 million, give or take). I happen to be American, but for those of you in the rest of the world, Tokyo’s population is similar to that of Canada, while Seoul and Mexico City are a little bigger than Sri Lanka and a bit smaller than Australia.

If social network users were citizens, then Bebo and LinkedIn would have similar populations to Tokyo, Canada and California. BlackPlanet, Last.fm, Mixi and Skyrock would be about the same size as Seoul, Mexico City, Texas, Sri Lanka and Australia. You could compare Orkut to France and Iran. Windows Live would be nestled between Mexico and Japan. The biggest social networks, MySpace and Facebook, would both be larger than Indonesia but smaller than the United States. China and India don’t seem to have any neighbors. Yet.

By 2015, Mumbai and Lagos will be jostling with Seoul for second largest metropolis after Tokyo. Dhaka, Sao Paulo and Karachi will also join the 20-million-plus club. We don’t yet know who or what the Mumbais, Lagoses, Dhakas, Sao Paulos, Karachis, Chinas or Indias of social networking will be. Or even if the social networking paradigm will have any relevance in 2015. But I think it would be safe to assume that more people will be more connected in ways that transcend current spatial, cultural and technological constraints.

I recently came across two metaphors that might suggest a direction for this discourse. First, the Planetary Skin Initiative, a collaboration between NASA and Cisco to integrate “petabytes of unstructured data” from ground-, sea-, air-, and space-based systems, allowing “real-time situational analysis” and creating an “intuitive cognitive decision space for trusted communities.” OK, so it’s SkyNet, but note the implication that Earth is an organism. The second item is Joshua-Michéle Ross’s concept of a Social Nervous System, which he suggests is emerging from current social networks and “coordinates (and sometimes directs) physical activity in the world.” I guess that would be the difference between autonomic and somatic nervous systems.

Is it useful to imagine our world as an organism? What are the implications in terms of politics, business, and civil society? Organisms can be highly adaptable, intelligent and resourceful. They are susceptible to injury and disease, particularly if they are frail or exhausted. They require nourishment. They produce waste. They age and die, and if they don’t reproduce they become extinct. A threat to one part or the failure of one system can be catastrophic for the whole. An organism’s skin and nervous system can help it protect itself, learn about its environment, and communicate. How might these and other metaphors enrich our understanding of - and the effectiveness of our actions in - different kinds of spaces?