Homo smartphonicus

Have you ever considered that in specific circumstances the decision process of the Homo Smartphonicus is not really different from his first human ancestor or even an insect or a bird?

Well, reading Alemi Mario's The Amazing Journey of Reason (SpringerBriefs in Computer Science) you will encounter two terms allelomimesis and autocatalysis explaining some really interesting phenomena.

Let's start with the meaning of these two words: the first one, in a nutshell, means imitation, and the second refers to the fact that “the probability of an individual adopting a particular behaviour is a function of the number of individuals already exhibiting that behaviour.” (Goss and Deneubourg 1988).

To make these concepts simpler, the author explains that when in a flock of birds one bird takes flight, the birds nearby will follow it (allelomimesis), and very soon the number of birds who have taken flight will be big enough that all birds will take flight (autocatalysis).

The first bird eventually takes flight because in its DNA a suspicious noise triggers a reaction where "the information about the threat probably traveled via a superfast neural channel that feeds directly into a part of the brain that processes emotions, bypassing the visual cortex that supports the conscious experience of “seeing.” Kahneman, Daniel. Thinking, Fast and Slow.

So, to sum up, the first bird takes flight in an 'unconscious status', the birds nearby by imitations, and the rest of the flock because of probabilities.

At this point, you may be wondering why we are talking of birds if the title of the article is homo smartphonicus; well, the "allelomimetic and autocatalytic behaviour has been part of how instincts have evolved for hundreds of millions – or even billions – of years." Alemi, Mario. The Amazing Journey of Reason (SpringerBriefs in Computer Science).

The truth is that, when we talk about social networks and fake news, it happens that as soon as someone starts promoting an unscientific idea other users will follow and this group will become bigger and bigger because of autocatalysis and no subject matter-expert opinion will be strong enough to restrain humans from following something carved in our DNA.

Allelomimetic and autocatalytic were designed by nature to guide the evolution of life towards forms of aggregation and to produce a more intelligent society but, unfortunately, also to make viral fake news on social networks.