Before Christmas I started working on this idea for a MashedIn ad. I wasn’t trying to be tasteless. I’d recently read an article that talked about dogs’ amazing sense of smell – possibly this review in the New York Times of Alexandra Horowitz’s Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know – and I started thinking how dogs have an advantage over humans in their ability to detect common acquaintances. When I meet a stranger on the street I have no way of knowing that he works in the same office as my friend Barry. If I were a dog, I’d be able to smell Barry when the stranger approached.Being clever humans, we’ve developed technology to bring us up to speed with the lower animals. Speech was the first such “technology” (if you can call it that) – one caveman could ask another one, “Hey, do you know Barry over in Cave 93?” Later on someone developed written communication, making it possible to attach labels to your friends for instant identification. This worked all right in small farming communities where no-one knew more than ten or twelve people, but when people moved into big cities, labels became impractical. Whenever two Babylonians met they’d have to spend a half hour circling each other, looking for common friends.

Then came the printing press, the telephone, the internet, social media, and at last we’ve reached the apex of technological achievement – MashedIn, which allows people to identify common friends and interests across multiple social networks.

We’ve finally caught up with the dogs.

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