During my undergraduate a Massey University I really loved sociology, I took just one paper on it as an elective but it was by far the most interesting. Today Darl offered us a taste of why it may or may not be my scene as we delved into dualism, duality and human agency. Our focus was to uncover and understand the metaphor of connectivity and how it explains the socio-technical aspects of our connectedness as individuals The afternoon was spent with a little bit of futurology, brainstorming in groups as to where we thought the workplace and communication would be in 20 years. I stuck to what I know and spoke a bit about the semantic web and a future where data portability has become all encompassing. I also rifted on a bit about how A whole New Mind would become a reality as almost all analytical and technical tasks become automated. If this sounds fun its cause it really is, no hidden academic essay behind the brainstorming, just a conversation and an idea. My key thought on things that would change was our need for social interaction with physical proximity and that no degree of virtualisation available in our homes will negate the need for a physical workplace to interact in. Somehow we managed to tangent onto human drivers with someone arguing that human nature has never changed and Alex had to put him in his place.

At the moment I disagree with you so we're having an argument, but 3000 years ago I would have wanted to smash your brains in. -Alex worker

Sometimes we're all a little disappointed things haven't changed. After the future session we broke up into our groups to discuss the upcoming projects, my team of four and another are working on the development of an instrument to measure someone's personal connectivity, think Myers-Briggs except instead of telling you you're extraverted we tell you you're on facebook way to much you over connected freak and might be eligible for disconnect anxiety. Good thing I have an iPhone then huh? Image Credit: Smull