Learning from Social Media
Despite its many flaws, social media can help us understand the underlying social fabric we all live within. Curandi believes this is critical for all of us to do more together, more effectively.
Powerful new technologies and business models often produce unintended consequences before we fully understand them. Today’s social media problems offer one more example. Currently, powerful core algorithms use the underlying network model to align human instinct, emotion, and behavior at a level of intensity and intimacy society has never experienced.
Social media platforms have mastered navigating natural social systems. Think about how much Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, and others influence your behavior and the behavior of the world around you—even when you don’t subscribe. Then, think about how much you influence those platforms.
Most people struggle to understand society's underlying mechanics and behavior. This is because we live inside the social system and we never directly experience more than what is close to us. We never see the system as a whole and what it is doing.
Social media’s effects may seem new, but the technology is simply an accelerator of normal social processes. The social systems we are used to, whether community, family, neighborhood, or religion, have always influenced us more than we affect them. What the community believes and how it behaves have always dominated the beliefs and behaviors of those living within it. These patterns have existed as long as humans have walked the Earth.
What’s new is the intensity and speed with which social media can see its effects and adapt in real-time to achieve more than past systems could.
So, is this development a good thing?
Tools are neither good nor bad; it depends on how we use them. Social media lives in the connections between us. Its value is the ability to see human behavior from the perspective of the whole. Appropriately used, its model and methods are the key to improving humanity's existential problems.
Imagine if this information were applied to something other than acquiring financial power and control. What if we used the network model to make the community robust and a source of opportunity for everyone to thrive?
Curandi’s network model connects independent care providers and the people they serve. From these connections, it optimizes the support environment so that together, we create steady incremental success that grows opportunity and hope.
Operating within connections of support, we will view the community from a new and more accurate perspective.
Curandi is leading the way on a path of new thinking. It's time for a change. Let’s connect.