Little Ants and Social Engineering: a wild thought
Ant! Ant! My daughter called me into the bathroom. So there is! A couple of brave little ants were wondering around the bathroom floor in search for something. The invasion made my 1.5 years old very excited even though this time around she dares not to touch those ants after being stung by a bee two days ago. For me, it's time to apply high-tech gadgets which I bought long time ago: COMBAT, ant killing gel. I applied a thin layer along the corners where those ants were found. Finger crossed!
One night later, to my dismay and surprise, there are at least hundreds more ants encircling around the ant gel trail I applied. So those ants have reached tipping point somehow at night. I wanted to kill them all using the most forcefull and effective methods: crush them to death. Just when I was about to show my might, I noticed that some of them have died when enjoying the poisonious food while others are still diligently enjoying moving and eating what's left, and they form a very coordinated line and seldom expand their "battle" ground more than where the ant gel is. So you see a thick black trail moving along the yellow gel path back and forth. Occasionally, one or two ant soldiers travel one or two feet away and seem lost forever.
I know ant is very social and I can see clearly that they do not waste energy at all as a community to harvest food, in this case, poison. This is much like oneline gaming or some of the narrow defined social engineering services. What if I drop some ant gel in a strategic localtions but disconnected from the main trail? Will the ants expand their current territory and form interesting coordination and sharing patterns? For certain, I can clearly observe any pattern changes by their black color. So I dropped my gel dots and formed a semi-circle.
In the beginning, only few ants traveling along the top tips of the orginal gel line reached the new ant gel islands. But not for long, more ants somehow figured out that crossing the area connecting the line and the faraway dots is the shorted path instead moving along the parameter. So very soon you see ants coming back and forth randomly and the empty semi-area is full of busy little ants now...
When we develop social engineering services, we always think of focusing on core features. This approach is obviously right. However, through my ant experience, I am thinking whether providing some strategic features together with the core would make more sense since the key point for social engineering is to build an environment for people freely networking and trying new ways of enhancing the social values. So instead of dictating what people can do in a SE platform, it makes more sense to me that provide dis-similar but highly connect-able features which allow users make what ever uses and connections that make sense to them. This is particular useful for mobile social networking due to its dynamic and heterogeneous nature. I am waiting to see some applications geard toward enabling based on flattened exchange services (mesh mobile social network).
In a sense, we are no different than those little ants.
One night later, to my dismay and surprise, there are at least hundreds more ants encircling around the ant gel trail I applied. So those ants have reached tipping point somehow at night. I wanted to kill them all using the most forcefull and effective methods: crush them to death. Just when I was about to show my might, I noticed that some of them have died when enjoying the poisonious food while others are still diligently enjoying moving and eating what's left, and they form a very coordinated line and seldom expand their "battle" ground more than where the ant gel is. So you see a thick black trail moving along the yellow gel path back and forth. Occasionally, one or two ant soldiers travel one or two feet away and seem lost forever.
I know ant is very social and I can see clearly that they do not waste energy at all as a community to harvest food, in this case, poison. This is much like oneline gaming or some of the narrow defined social engineering services. What if I drop some ant gel in a strategic localtions but disconnected from the main trail? Will the ants expand their current territory and form interesting coordination and sharing patterns? For certain, I can clearly observe any pattern changes by their black color. So I dropped my gel dots and formed a semi-circle.
In the beginning, only few ants traveling along the top tips of the orginal gel line reached the new ant gel islands. But not for long, more ants somehow figured out that crossing the area connecting the line and the faraway dots is the shorted path instead moving along the parameter. So very soon you see ants coming back and forth randomly and the empty semi-area is full of busy little ants now...
When we develop social engineering services, we always think of focusing on core features. This approach is obviously right. However, through my ant experience, I am thinking whether providing some strategic features together with the core would make more sense since the key point for social engineering is to build an environment for people freely networking and trying new ways of enhancing the social values. So instead of dictating what people can do in a SE platform, it makes more sense to me that provide dis-similar but highly connect-able features which allow users make what ever uses and connections that make sense to them. This is particular useful for mobile social networking due to its dynamic and heterogeneous nature. I am waiting to see some applications geard toward enabling based on flattened exchange services (mesh mobile social network).
In a sense, we are no different than those little ants.
posted by David Gong at 3:42 PM
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