Social network revolution of social network

The social network revolution is one of the three major revolutions affecting human society in the new era, along with the mobile revolution and the Internet revolution, of which the social network revolution is the first but the least noticed.

The changes brought about by the social network revolution include extensive connectivity, weakening of groups, and enhancement of individual autonomy. 1. Convenience of transportation drives the remoteness of social networks.

From the 1950s to the 1980s, the construction and improvement of the U.S. interstate highway network made long-distance travel possible; after the 1980s, with the increase in people's incomes, the gradual popularization of private cars, "self-driving" has become the choice of many families to travel.

Over the past three decades, private cars have become widely popular in the U.S. In 2011, the proportion of U.S. households without a private car dropped from 21 percent in 1969 to 8 percent of total households, and during the same period, the proportion of households with only one car dropped from 48 percent to 31 percent, with the majority of households owning at least two private cars. People are traveling more frequently by car and traveling longer distances, which, in any case, has led to less dependence on where they live.

The increase in passenger airplanes and the opening of new routes have made long-distance travel more convenient, allowing even relatives and friends who live far apart to see each other more often. Because of the convenience of air travel and the lower cost of travel, airplanes are favored by many businesspeople. in 1954, the average person in the United States flew only once every four years, while in 2005, the average person traveled by air 2.5 times a year.

The popularity of private cars and airplanes has made social networks more far-flung.

2. The rapid development of communication technology and Internet technology has pushed information acquisition and exchange to become more efficient and personalized.

In the 1860s and 1870s, the biggest innovation in communications was the automatic dialing function of the telephone, which replaced the operator in each area, and then the telephone came into thousands of homes, and some families even installed multiple telephones with the same phone number. As the telephone became more widespread, the cost of calls was further reduced and the use of the telephone became easier and more personalized. The problem of long-distance communication still exists, but it can no longer pose any obstacle to people's telephone communication.

The rapid growth of telephony between 1950 and 2000 was followed by a dramatic change, with the number of telephones slowly declining from 2000 onwards. The reasons for this are self-evident: on the one hand, more personalized, flexible and powerful cell phones have crowded out the phone market; on the other hand, advances in wireless network technology have made it possible to access the Internet without dialing a number through a phone. By 2006, the number of mobile phone lines in the U.S. had nearly surpassed that of landlines, and by the end of 2010, cell phone users as well had reached 30 percent of the total U.S. population, which includes half of all young people under the age of 30 .

The opening up of the Internet to the public began in the late 1980s, and the rapid development of computer-based information and communication technologies (ICTs) further intensified the personalization of communication, a change that was global because all countries in the world used the same communication tools. ICTs, along with the ease of transportation, made the function of the city change. are no longer a gathering of people and industry, but the center of a social network.

3. The general climate of peace and the expansion of international trade have reinforced the interconnectedness of business and society.

With the decline of regional conflicts, international interactions have become more frequent. In major European countries, the enlargement of the European Union and the signing of the 1985 Euro-25 trade agreement eliminated barriers to trade, labor, and movement between many European countries. Military friction, common in the volatile Middle East, rarely occurs in developed countries.

The globalization of production and trade moved to a higher level. With China's economic reforms in the 1980s and the collapse of the Soviet Union in the late 1990s, the world became more open and the United States became the world's leading economy. The international division of labor became more refined, and products were produced from all over the world and sold on the world market. Consumer choices are diversified, and people can obtain products or services from anywhere in the world, which is an important reason for the tendency of individual social relations to be networked. 1. Changes in family composition, roles and responsibilities drive the shift from grouping to networking.

Decreasing marriage rates, shrinking family size and the trend of housewives to working women have changed the traditional family structure and networked families have emerged. The family is no longer a warm castle, but a starting point for people to the outside world, and people spend less and less time at home.

2. Organized voluntary services were replaced by more loose and open civic and religious activities.

Political theorist Robert Putnam, in Bowling Alone, cites the fact that membership in America's 32 largest organizations fell by nearly half between 1960 and 1997, and likewise the number of people still active in those organizations shrank dramatically.

This shift away from organizations and toward independent personal lives is also evident in religious practice. According to Putnam's American Grace, the 1960s saw a wave of "religious experimentation" in the United States. During this period, people explored "spiritual" behavior, which was not unrelated to the decline of church services during this period. Today, few people in the United States belong to a religious organization, and most people have flexible and individualized ways of practicing their religion. Many people do not adhere to the religious beliefs they were born into, and may change them at any time later in life. The three major denominations in the United States, the Catholic Church, the Baptist Church, and the Methodist Church's have more or less suffered losses in terms of adherents. This does not mean that Americans are less religious; according to a 2008 survey of U.S. citizens' religious and public life, 92 percent of respondents said they still believe in "God," just in a different way.

3. The shift from a popular culture spread by a handful of mass media companies to a fragmented culture spread through multiple channels.

Before the Internet brought people massive amounts of information, the variety of mass media had increased, from newspapers and magazines to radio and television, and people could experiment with all styles and types of information access. Taking television as an example, there are hundreds of TV channels but very few programs that people really pay attention to. People change the channel by remote control and only pay attention to the information they are interested in, and the personalization of information dissemination is enhanced. 1. Work in developed countries has become more flexible, with manufacturing workers who manipulate machines transformed into computerized white-collar workers.

With the restructuring of the U.S. industry, the dominance of manufacturing was replaced by the service industry, especially the information industry. Business owners no longer need to closely supervise blue-collar workers as they once did to keep an eye on their employees, and the hierarchical form of management is gradually being phased out in favor of a flexible management style suited to innovative work. People are using computers to work in a relaxed work environment and free work schedules. The physical space of the office is no longer important, and in fact, many projects are efficiently accomplished through networked remote collaboration.

2. Racial, Gender, Religious, and Sexual Orientation Discrimination in U.S. Society Gradually Eliminated

While discrimination still exists in U.S. society - for example, as late as 2006 as many as 20% of U.S. residents did not want to be neighbors to an immigrant, and 22% did not want to live with Muslims - there is a growing blurring of discrimination on the basis of racial, gender, religious, and sexual orientation differences.

Different races can live together peacefully and as equals. 17 states in the U.S. prohibited interracial marriage before 1967, and with the introduction of a federal court decree legalizing interracial marriages, interracial and even transnational couples have become commonplace and widely accepted by the people to this day. On the other hand, citizens of different races have been able to take an active part in politics, as illustrated by Barack Obama, the first black president in U.S. history.

With the decline of church services, more personalized forms of religion have become more popular. The issue of homosexuality, previously considered a social taboo, is increasingly being discussed, and the gay population is becoming more socially acceptable.

3. There was a decrease in socially coordinated welfare measures and an increase in independent individual pension accounts.

The gradual weakening of the U.S. socially-coordinated employee welfare system has prompted people to be more active and independent in seeking a way out for their personal wealth, work, and retirement. Until a few years ago, many people were reluctant to leave their "iron rice bowls" because of defined-benefit pensions, but soon a number of medium-sized and large companies and government departments downsized their defined-benefit pensions. This shift was not as pronounced in micro and small businesses, but it still had a significant impact on American society. Subsequently, employed Americans turned to the operation of individual pension accounts, breaking the link between the employing organization and the pension. Something similar is slowly happening in the health insurance sector, where these changes are reducing the fear of "job-hopping" and increasing the freedom to choose and change jobs.

The blurring of traditional boundaries such as community, religion, country, race, and gender, the expanding range of people's travels, faster access to information, and more extensive and direct exchanges of information, as well as networked individualism, are all influencing the entire social structure, and a flexible and fragmented social network is gradually being built up.