A Proven Formula for Social Interaction May Not be Far Away
The digital residue that now trails behind every human being who engages with the internet and mobile phone technology is emerging in the shape of a mathematical formula for human behaviour.
As Mark Buchanan observed in his recent article in New Scientist, data is like gold dust and for decades the speculative nature of social science has prevented it from being anything more than a poor cousin of the hard sciences.
However the advent of social media and the mobile phone means that social behaviour is now very much quantifiable.
A team at Northeastern University used mobile phone data to analyse human movements and found they could predict where an individual would be within 1km of a mobile phone tower with 90% accuracy. The resulting statistics showed a mathematical pattern strikingly like those of other organisms with even those who step outside the standard home-work-home commute ultimately fitting within a set pattern.
In addition the data now obtainable through group and individual activity on social media sites like Twitter and Facebook means social scientists are now practically drowning in behavioural data.
It seems then that a formula for human interaction may not be far away and despite the advent of technology and its apparent transformation of our lives with social media and our mobile phones, it emulates a social pattern that may not have changed for man or mammal since the dawn of time.






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