Using Facebook & Twitter to Power Human Networks

What if your Facebook preferences could actively connect you with like-minded crowds throughout the evening? What if Twitter could enrich every conversation you had at your next business conference by getting the small talk out of the way the moment you walked in the room?

Right now, we rely on complex components to build our office network, our VOIP systems, etc. but with the advent of other forms of more visible networks, like Twitter and Seesmic and Facebook, it begs the question; what if we could take our own networks with us?

What if I could, on my phone or otherwise, take with me an intelligent network that knew my friends from Facebook, Twitter and work. Knew their roles and their position and privacy, etc. Now what if, in a given proximity (i.e. the same conference, same city, within 1000 miles, same altitude, etc.) we could connect with and collaborate with those people without individually contacting and without configuration? What if we could extend the edges of our social network by allowing us to intelligently configure our communication spectrums and integrate those otherwise tethered and electronic only networks into something more mobile and tangible in a real, on-foot, in-person world?

Imagine Owen's Open Space Technology but with intelligent machines, hardware and the social connectivity that mobile computing offers.

Food for thought. The device is the network. The social network is the real network. Passive technology for active, human communication...