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Circles
There’s a reason why Google chose circles for its new Google + social graph, and it isn’t just because it’s a clever name. If you search Google’s archive of images for the phrase “social graph” every single relevant image that comes up portrays relationships as being circular.
In the screen shot above, it’s clear that we humans seem to naturally illustrate our relationships as being… rounded. We live our lives constantly juggling these relationships with friends, partners, family, and colleagues in an intricate network that is unique to us. What better way to depict these predictably random dynamics than with a shape that has absolutely no bias towards any direction or alignment – the circle.
It's not you, it's me… Wait no it's totally you. Up until now, we’ve been forced to map these relationships within rigid digital constructs built by developers (see: me) to make it as easy as possible to manage that data as it scales into the millions of relationships.
It’s easy to lump people into classes and demographics and groups and categories because we receive (false) positive reinforcement from doing it, and quantifying these relationships by putting them into boxes makes them feel real.
You are my: [ ] Friend [ ] Family [ ] Pet [ ] Dinner
Since the first time someone drew a recognizable picture of someone else, having something we can go back to and look at and touch and say “Yeah, that person exists and we are important to each other!” has been an evolutionary significance in our development that technology hasn’t been able to properly convey quite yet. With every emerging social platform that comes around we get one step closer to translating the complexities of our relationships in ways that actually make sense, beyond being friends and followers.
If nothing else, Google + (and Circles specifically) is a reminder that our lives are ever-changing and the people we know now and will meet tomorrow don’t belong in any rigid box. If you are my friend, I appreciate my judgmental classification of you in my life just a wee bit more today than I did yesterday.
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Miami Zoo
Jess and I took yesterday off and spent some time at Zoo Miami, formerly known as the Miami Metro Zoo. It was really hot and we made the mistake of walking the entire thing instead of paying the $2 for the train or renting of these crazy two-seater bicycles.
I love zoos. Penguins and giraffes are my favorites, but we didn’t see any penguins. It was kind of a sad place because there were so few animals around considering the size of the empty spaces allotted for them. There were lots of empty exhibits, the monorail was broken, and there were no signs to tell you what animals were in what direction.
We did meet a nice man named Ron, who talked to us for a bit about koalas and kangaroos, and we were fortunate enough to get really close to a few animals that were relaxing near their windows to freedom. I took some pictures with my iPhone 4 (with HDR turned on) and shot about 2 minutes of video of a Galapagos turtle walking, slowly, into a wading pool.
Here’s the pics:
