I announce the appearance of a new Species on Earth

Quite a grandiose claim on my part. But read on, and you may agree (and whether or not you do, I'd like to hear from you).
It seems to me that Web 2.0 tools have changed children so much in the last 5 years that one could say with some reason that we have been present at the birth of a new form of homo sapiens. I call it "Homo Connectivus".
The kids I know have not twice as many, not 10 times as many, but HUNDREDS of times as many social connections than my generation had, through MySpace and other Web phenomena. A 12 year old child today may have hundreds of online 'friends', has shared thousands of videos, and Lord knows how many podcasts and music downloads.
This means that the nature of personal identity itself has changed. Kids today are so immersed in the worlds of thousands of other people that there is a great deal of blurring between who 'I' am and who 'they' are.
The Web has become a kind of 'connective tissue' that links people together so strongly that they seem like a new life form. (This has happened to a small extent to you and me also, but I think the real change is among people under 13 because so many of their personality structures were not fully formed at a time when they were already communing with hundreds of others online. Thus, you and I think of social networks as a new 'tool', whereas young kids see their social networks more as a big part of who they ARE.)
I don't think it's out of the question to call today's connected children a new species, because it's comparable to what happened on Earth 3.9 billion years ago. The first life forms were single celled organisms that had to perform every life function themselves. But as millions of years passed, cells found that by 'teaming up' with other cells, and developing specialization, each could benefit the larger whole, which led to complex multi-cellular organisms, including (eventually) us.
Kids today experience life in a radically different way than you and I did at their age. If they create art, or music, or video, they already KNOW at age 10 whether hundreds of others think they have talent or not, and they've already been cross-fertilized by so much other art that they are in effect already a collaboration.
If they have a notion that they'd like to be a teacher, or a writer, or a scientist, they already KNOW what hundreds of others think about these claims, and their efforts have already been 'edited' so many thousands of times that it's hard to separate the individual from the group.
Is this good or bad? I think a case can be made for either. But essentially it's just another step in evolution for Homo Sapiens, so we'd better get used to it.

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Permalink Reply by Steve Hargadon on October 17, 2007 at 3:55pm

OK. I really, really agree with a lot of what you have said. *And* I would add that it is important for those who are older to not forget that they will still face the same very basic human needs and challenges, and to remember that their growing up in a whole new environment that is unfamiliar to us doesn't mean that we don't still have very significant things to teach and help them with. In some ways, their new connections often actually magnify their needs to learn how to interact with others, how to develop a personal learning style, how to dig deeply into something, and how to focus and accomplish things of significance.

I love giving talks to kids about technology. First, they are blown away by the idea that an adult is attuned to their world; and second, I believe they are actually hungry for helpful adults. :)

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Permalink Reply by Connie Weber on October 18, 2007 at 5:29am

Hi Bob,

What a great essay! Really makes you think. I wonder if it's true that right within our time on earth a new "species" is coming along.

I would suggest that maybe we have a bifurcation in cultural evolution happening now. The discussions about the digital divide here on CR2.0 would have us think that some people are jumping into a new mindset and some people aren't at all. You've certainly got a good point by emphasizing that the change in mindset will mean even more to brain development if it happens before early adolescence.

"Homo Connectivus," huh?! Pretty good name. Sometimes I think we're becoming neurons or neural clusters in a much larger brain, a world brain.

I remember a distinct change in my brain that occurred after I'd been on CR2.0 for about three months, staying attuned to what's being talked about, looking at the links to applications and examples. The change was akin to rather suddenly understanding another language. The language of connectivity. The way I felt: when I'd think a thought, it'd get hotlinked. I'd see myself tracing back through thoughts in that manner. In my head I'd "click" on a subject to unfold another neuronic system, another netting (net-layer?) of thoughts, ideas, memories, questions. What was happening in my brain became--in the subjective view of my own cognitive operations--a microcosm of what's happening worldwide with the internet.
But sometimes I think it must be just the opposite, that the internet is taking on the shape and form of a human brain, mirroring its particles' ways of being. Is change coming from without or within? Well, obviously both. Are they mirroring each other, these changes within and between the species' members?

You brought up such a good topic to think about. It'd be great to hear from others--what IS going on, anyway?

A side-note: when I show my sixteen-year-old son these talks on CR2.0, he always says something to the effect of: "Oh yeah--the teacher network. You can tell it's a bunch of teachers. Look at how everybody thinks things through, writes an essay that has a thesis statement with supportive examples. On facebook, you ramble. You talk in much shorter sentences. Punctuation is entirely different. You talk in phrases more than in sentences." Nevertheless, he reads our talks with a good deal of interest, as does my 18-year-old daughter. This relates to what Steve replied. We've all got a lot to learn from each other.