Social Networks: The Next Generation

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Introduction

Technology and it’s take up and use by individuals and business has transformed how we run our lives and our businesses over the past sixty years. That rate of change is accelerating as we find new uses for ever more capable technologies which can be applied to more areas of our lives than imagined even ten years ago. Today we are learning and being trained to be capable members of the workforce using communication technologies deployed by some of the finest universities in the world. The increasingly imaginative ways we will be using technology over this next ten years will shape every aspect of our lives, from dating, to work, to leisure, to being an engaged citizen.

We think nothing of accessing information from the internet via Google or the Apps (applications) world and expect relevant information to be presented in useful formats within seconds. Our interconnectedness is truly global and at the same time we wish to develop and preserve our connections with our friends and family and also with our history and our past. As Alvin Toffler prophesied back in the 1970’s, we would create the mechanisms to organise, control and connect our planet, whist at the same time we as individuals would value our closest contacts and our communities would become increasingly important to us.

This report sets out to raise some of the exciting opportunities and some of the key challenges that social networks, our society and businesses serving that society will face through the rapidly expanding use of these powerful social media tools.

Chris van der Kuyl
Chief Executive Officer
brightsolid