My Network is My Search Engine

In the last post from Charlie Leadbeater for 2007, he refers to an argument he had with what he calls the "very articulate Baroness Susan Greenfield"about whether or not social media is bad for kids. She, a neuro-scientist says yes and gives a whole bunch of reasons, that I think could also have been applied to TV in my day (Sing with me: Roadrunner! Coyote Catches You!) but what I found really interesting is where Mr. Leadbeater starts to talk about one's ability to trust user generated content and the cacophony argument as he calls it, of information overload and how sites like Wikipedia, de.li.cious etc. all are starting to address this issue.

As networks become more and more decentralized, and our personal trusted social networks become more solidified, we will look to that network to help us parse the gazillions of bits and bytes of information that we are confounded with everyday. Why should I try keeping up on the latest tech trends, when my friend David Chant lives and breaths the stuff? I should be able to leverage his knowledge and connections as I wouldn't even know which resources to trust.

Technologies such as Google Co-Op are in the beginning stages of what this could become, and it will be interesting to see how it could get even more robust and smarter over time.

Now, if only I could get my Network to become my spellchecker.....