Bypassing a Man

For all past years, the computer technology has developed to catch up with those of man. Word Processing Software was only the replacement of a man writing on piece of paper, without having a paper. Email was only the replacement of man sending letter, without physically delivery. However, SN is little different. What it has replaced with is not the tangible assets like paper, but rather interaction. The example is corporate blog where customers can interact with the company without being at the same place or same time. This completely ignores the formal organization structure, social norm, and social structure of how formal parties are interacting. It gave a man new ability and function to network with people. Therefore, yes, of course, it will change the way business interact with customers, by bringing customers closer to the company. It will change the norm of Customer Relation Management, and also other social norms such as “friending”, or “relations”.

The trend of such software seems to have two characteristics: improvement of GUI, and web based open system. The improvement of GUI gave superpower to users that users do not have to know anything about implementation and still be able to access to the privilege of technology. Also, the web-based open software is becoming so popular that you do not need software installed to your computer. Maybe in few years, even our desktop would be web-based that we can login from any computer to access our personal desktop.

Such improvement seems great but many bypassed man’s ability of interaction. Sure it is great, but such development is not based on human nature like developing to build house or cook food. The technology is totally man-made yet bypasses his ability. I am very excited to see how the nature of human interaction would change, but nothing really seems ordered or complete enough as our traditional means of communication: face-to-face.