Spontaneous social networking

What AR and AN technology offers is the ability for social network
applications to network users in a local area. People are lazy. People
want friends they can get to easily. Currently the feature to know who's
around and who's bored and who wants to do something spontaneous just to
socialise.

What I envisage is a new form of proximity social networking. Ultimately
people still want to interact with their local community as well as the
wider planetary community.

Imagine someone moves into an area but doesn't know anyone. They can go
on a site like Meetups.com and find local interest groups but it's
easier to simply look to their smartphone. Smartphones know where you
are and new AN platforms will serve location information for other
people so people can connect locally. The information can be private or
public, so some people may set their devices to always let everyone know
where they are whereas others may set their privacy settings so only
their closest friends know where they are. A person can meet up with
people locally who are interested in food ball or pubbing or whatever.

There's also the option for totally spontaneous socialisation in the
local area. This is done through a phone call now but it involves
ringing round lots of people. It'll be simpler to log in to a proximity
social networking platform just as people now log in to Facebook to keep
up to date with their distant friends.

I'm wondering if this is the sort of stuff that might make people
happier? The proximity social network application has the capability to
bolster local communities. They offer the opportunity to meet with
people who are likeminded and live local. It also involves groups and
tribes who are open to new members. This sort of socialisation is the
opposite of the closed clique. It is my hope that people will be more
generous with their friend groups in the future and this may be part of
the change in social behaviour.

There's a lot of evidence to support the negative impact of lonliness,
isolation and exclusion on people. It's a strong factor in what drives
people mad and to kill themselves. Of course there are other factors
too, like a broken heart or a broken life. I don't know when technology
will be able to fix those problems but there's a hope that simple mobile
phone technology will bridge barriers between human beings and that's a
good thing.