A critical evaluation on the emerging social media patterns and the future of information architecture in social media universe in the possible event of 'De-Cognition'.

1. ‘De-Cognition’: On the Social Media Information
Architecture
Demystifying the Internet Pragmatism: A Cognitive Approach
Any media ecosystem evolves around the currents of communication. How different is Social Media from
the mainstream media and the traditional formats of a communicative medium? The levels and depth of
commoditization has liquidated the reach of communicative rationality in the media formats such as
Television, Film, etc. Social Media has evolved around the concept of social networking and the inherent
non-linear and decentralized nature of Internet. Social Networking as a concept has roots in Sociology and
demands a wider narrative. To analyze Internet as a Public Sphere, we need to demystify various
abstractions to reach the political economy of the worlds largest producer and consumer of information.
Can Social Media, with its base in Social Networking topology has always offered a potential for becoming
the next generation cognitive network. It has even been visualized as the axis for a semantic web where
information becomes a self organizing network. Is this technological pragmatism anywhere near real life
possibility? If not, why so? This is the vantage point of this critique. Why do we need this much of
information in Social Media? What is the driving force behind the information architecture and the
accumulation of information in the social media space? Big Data and the information overloading has
becomes the prime movers for the Social Business. Social Business has been predicted as the game
changer in the information technology landscape. Thus it is a big business now.
The question is has the cost of business sacrificed the potentials for developing cognitive networks around
Social Media. When it comes to the information architecture, we need to know the basics. Who is the
producer of information? It is each of us. How are the Search Engine giants generating wealth of
information and the uniform resource locators (URL). The URLs act as the nodes in the information
graphs. It is each of us, consumers, who creates various paths around these nodes and make them alive.
This is largely forgotten. Thus the real value of information is generated by the end users like us.
Information machines are thriving on the cognitive networks created by our information production,
consumption, circulation and re-production. Search Engines are only one side of the coin. The present
generation content aggregators are also only dynamic nodes of information.
A cognitive network created by us becomes commodity in the split of each second. This commodity again
circulates among the networks of us. In each turn and twist of this information nodes and network, it
generates money, the real money! Thus we are working for a global system of finance capital virtually not
knowing the sweet sweat that we shed in front of the dumb terminals of computers. It is indeed a great
state of hibernation or a glorified state of social pathology.