In fact, judging by Twitter’s Trending Topics, the re-tweeting process does not point to either good, or important content. Of course, it may not be right to assume that a global brain will be smarter, and real significance will be lost in the tsunami of celebrity drivel.Amplify’d from docs.google.comBut recent evidence in
neuroscience shows the truth is actually an interested twist on this idea - a
twist that could have important implications as a model of how global
consciousness could emerge from real-time social media like Twitter.In reality, synapses
are modified according to a rule called Spike
Time Dependent Plasticity (STDP).
In a nutshell, STDP says that if two neurons fire (= spike) in rapid
succession, the connection from the one
that fires first to the one that fires second will be strengthened.users
could be automatically steered towards following folks who are the first to
post content that will interest them - towards those who are considered the
‘thought leaders’ you might say. And
content creators who work hard to be the first to find and tweet interesting
content will be rewarded automatically with a growing list of followerscontent
generators on Twitter will compete to be the first to create good content or
break important news