Social media is the final icing on this powerful global cake

Since the beginning of time our ancestors have sought to explore their physical world for survival, pleasure and curiosity. Perhaps the reasons behind exploration are somewhat deeper and more philosophical. Man seems to have a perpetual yearning to answer life's big questions such as "Who are we?" and "Why we are here?" Ancient explorers sought a new world. We have reached across the universe and plunged into the depths of the sea. Man's most recent exploration, however, is non-material, "virtual," as we search for new ways to communicate with each other. Social media and mobile technology are the latest advances in man's ever present search for meaning and relationship. The Internet was initially designed for military purposes as an unstoppable communication pathway should the U.S. be under cold war attack. Our enemies could always destroy one single computer but it would be impossible to destroy an entire network decentralized and able to be easily rerouted. Eventually the Internet was declassified and in the domain of scientists, universities and computer geeks. In these early days of this now civilian Internet, it was a world of dial-ups and raw data. It operated much like the wild west especially before Yahoo's manual categorization and Google's algorithms. In looking at the future of social media there are two exciting growth areas to keep an eye on. Exploring and expanding our real life connections through virtual worlds. More and more, people are using social media, especially through mobile technology, to explore the world around us. Are you single and looking for a date? Just turn on your cell phone and discover there might be an attractive male or female standing on the parallel corner. In Japan mobile dating has grown into a billion dollar industry. In Second Life, a virtual world complete with its own economy, a Coldwell Banker real estate firm actually had set up a virtual office to sell real real estate online. Social media is the final icing on this powerful global cake. It is what makes the Internet's virtualness reflective of our life associations and relationships and therefore so much more real. It has given us the confidence to be ourselves online to friends and then beyond that to a broader world by giving us security and choice. It is only very recently that people started being themselves online and using their real names and personas. This openness happened through the comforts and ironically confines of social media. Robin Greenbaum and Michael Lorber are the founders of Cobroke Nation (www.cobrokenation.com), New York, N.Y.