The Backstory

New Obama linguistic occurrences

As I was leaving the grocery store this morning, two men came out of the Wells Fargo Bank. The snippet of conversation included, "Thats what she said, there was no backstory or anything."

We are living in worlds of backstories. Social networking allows us to share the backstories of our lives. So maybe you don't care. Well then you don't have to listen to it on the phone or read it.. its your option. The concept of a back story is relatively new. Some people that get Christmas newsletters abhor the backstories that they contain. I could never understand this. Why wouldn't you want to know what was going on rather publicly with your friends.

Studies have been made on the capacity of following social networks. The major limitation is rather finite number. For social non interactive connections with other humans the number is very near 150. On social networking, the direct interactions with people you know is practically much smaller and is gender different. For women it is 15 for men it is 10. I find these numbers pretty interesting. We like to track 150 but we only respond regularly to at the most 15.

What are the implications to union organizing? The units of interaction must be dropped to around 10 to 15 otherwise there is no chance that input can move up and down the chain.

What are the implications to departments in large schools. Once the department gets above 15 the groups fraction and their is limited interaction.

Social networking allows us to maximize the social model with daily interactions for those we choose to interact. It also allows us to broadcast our backstories with more people that we do not interact but are merely spectators to their lives.

So.. share your "backstory" with your 150 on facebook. Or better yet. let me know that I am very off base with your comments.

: ) Pat