Feed on

Social capacitance

In the world of physics electrical capacitance is the ability of a body to store an electrical charge.

You can see capacitance in action when, for instance, LED lights take a while to fade after the power supply has been turned off.

These days locations have a social capacitance. Through applications like Foursquare they are able to store “personal charge”.

And this personal charge, generated by the dynamo of multiple check-ins, takes a while to fade after you move on to pastures new.

You are physically there today and physically gone tomorrow.

But your social media presence in an area has a half life and decays over time.

We moved office in Edinburgh in the middle of December.

But my social capacitance in EH3 is such that I’ve been losing Foursquare mayorships around the old office right up until last week.

Electrical capacitance is measured in Farads.

Social capacitance is evidently measured in Egads.


Leave a Reply