My newest Social Commentary column is live at Darwin Magazine.

[from The Barriers of Content and Context]

We can all just get along -- once we figure out how to find one another and what our groups are up to.

Social networking is suffering the curse of all attractive innovations in the modern era: As even the most winning innovations rise into popular consciousness, the backlash against them begins instantaneously. The traditional lag between initial adoption by a small percentage of hip, connected "innovators" and the later contact with the "majoritarians" that comprise the overwhelming bulk of the market has been squashed to an almost immediate effect. Just as truckers' caps begin to diffuse out to the average metrosexual a few weeks after becoming cool, the glitterati already declare them passé.