Its a question that pops up from time to time in newspaper articles (e.g. this BBC article ) and technology magazines: are we too connected? In other words, with the ever present cellphone at our collective sides are we too easy to reach? The worry is that as the number of networks we join increases, the pressure to devote equal and significant amounts of time to each becomes increasingly unmanageable. This situation seems reminiscent of the network exchange theory problems we discussed in class a few weeks ago. If we assume that the time someone spends in constructing and maintaining a connection to a network is the cost or worth of an edge to them, and that each node is a network (in the most abstract sense of the word, anything from a cellphone network to one’s immediate physical surroundings) that person is connected to (with one special “personal” node representing the individual), we can easily see the result of adding another node connected to the “personal” node. Now the individual must repartition their limited time yet again to account for this additional edge. Furthermore, these nodes represent networks; the networks (in most cases) can exist without the edge to a particular “personal” node, thus each other node has an “outside offer” of much higher value than the current edge. This fact, prima facie, forces the person to act much like the middle node in our 5 person exchange model, simultaneously competing with every outside offer to not get cut out of an exchange. Its an unwinnable battle.

Then why do people try anyway?

The reason lies in human nature. The fundamental difference between a social and technical network is that the former remembers past transgressions. Social networks take emotional investment and time to build; because of this, we are preprogrammed not to let any of our connections languish or die*. In fact, if a social tie does perish (not languish or become temporarily cut), its often harder to recreate than it was the first time. Unfortunately, we have not yet adapted to technical networks which have no memory, and will let you join, leave, and rejoin with much more flexibility. This leads to people joining more networks than we have adapted to (because they can or because they feel they must), and treating each of those networks as equivalent to our real-life networks.

The solution, far from divesting oneself of all electronics for a day (as the BBC article touted), is to recognize that technical networks are intrinsically less important than social networks (its more acceptable to let a phone call roll to the answering service than it is to interrupt a conversation) and actively enforce that rule in one’s daily life. Moreover, people always have power over all the technical networks they are part of because they can dictate the terms of the exchange; its far more acceptable to walk away from any exchange with a electronic device than it is to walk away from a person. Those who have fully embraced this ideal have actually prioritized their life so that the less important things, like work-related activities, happen solely over a technical network. These people (predictably programmers and their ilk) were recently singled-out in a slashdot article which touted the benefits, particularly the freedom, of working wholly online. Perhaps the many virtual edges in our personal networks we are developing today will give us more physical freedom tomorrow.

*If you want neat empirical proof of this fact, try this trick. If you need to ask a quick question of someone - particularly someone like a receptionist who has a line of people waiting to talk to them - instead of joining the line, try calling the phone on their desk. Most of the time, the person will make the entire line wait while they answer the phone (and your question). This virtual queue-jumping technique works because the receptionist knows that the “connection” between him/her and the person on the other end of the phone will expire the soonest. In an attempt to save the “connection” he/she will stop everything else and devote all their energy to the phone even if he/she knows that it’s just another non-important person calling.