Sunday, February 15, 2004
Social Network Elitism
This is just an expansive and scattered rant based on a comment I posted to Joi Ito's weblog regarding his post about a percieved social pecking order at the ETech conference. It seemed important to me at the time to write about what social perspectives people bring to online communities, how they participate online and the effects of online interaction on future face to face socialization. It's not a well-formed idea; just pondering where we're at and where it could lead.
Some people won't tolerate social structures that consistently mimic a high school mentality and will use the net to reroute the structure in an attempt to create new groups that are more fair; development of the Atom spec was interesting for that reason. There will always be aspects of non-democratic pecking order(s) within groups, but if it's just a low grade fever groups thrive to some extent. It's important for individuals to participate in multiple groups, participating at different levels in each group with patience, humility and grace. Practicing this in online communities requires little effort for some, a conscience effort for others and for a few it is difficult, frustrating or not worth the effort at all. But when more people participate at different levels the groups in which they lead will benefit from the perspective gained elsewhere.
Groups survive because participants give and get. They thrive because of the ways in which the participants give and get. People stay in groups because they enjoy the process as well as the reward. So, eventually, when a group becomes group-aware does it develop a conscience sense of spirit and charity? Maybe that's the tipping point, maybe that's where some of these groups are at or at least a number of its participants are at that point. I think that's what drives Linux and FOSS. I don't participate enough to know where it's going, but I've been reading weblogs for almost four years and I don't subscribe to the blogosphere as a social entity. The smaller pieces are there but the leading groups are just now learning how to loosely join, so in a sense, it probably looks like high school, but it won't for long.
The net has accelerated social grouping and regrouping. We continue to create tools that increase that accelation and now social networking tools are being deployed to analyse these processes. Maybe they'll analyze the content as well as the connections, helping us understand the health of online communities in real-time. Was ETech just a bigger FOO Camp? Some seem to think it was to some extent, but I don't think there's any need to point fingers. Democracy will be important for online communities and equality, but patience, humility, grace and charity will make the difference as groups reach out to other groups.
Where are all these online communities leading us? I get the sense that eventually there will be a demand for democratic representation on the internet. We've used the net to get laid and make money, now we're using it to collaborate and make friends. What will we do with what we've learned from Deanspace? Soon we'll see local issues and politics addressed in online forums, not just in election cycles, but continually. Eventually municipalities and state governments may pick up on it and it could progress beyond that, but it also seems to me that this is in direct conflict with commercial globalization. Hopefully, even though commercial globalization is sucking the humanity from humanity, online communities can counteract it.
Some people won't tolerate social structures that consistently mimic a high school mentality and will use the net to reroute the structure in an attempt to create new groups that are more fair; development of the Atom spec was interesting for that reason. There will always be aspects of non-democratic pecking order(s) within groups, but if it's just a low grade fever groups thrive to some extent. It's important for individuals to participate in multiple groups, participating at different levels in each group with patience, humility and grace. Practicing this in online communities requires little effort for some, a conscience effort for others and for a few it is difficult, frustrating or not worth the effort at all. But when more people participate at different levels the groups in which they lead will benefit from the perspective gained elsewhere.
Groups survive because participants give and get. They thrive because of the ways in which the participants give and get. People stay in groups because they enjoy the process as well as the reward. So, eventually, when a group becomes group-aware does it develop a conscience sense of spirit and charity? Maybe that's the tipping point, maybe that's where some of these groups are at or at least a number of its participants are at that point. I think that's what drives Linux and FOSS. I don't participate enough to know where it's going, but I've been reading weblogs for almost four years and I don't subscribe to the blogosphere as a social entity. The smaller pieces are there but the leading groups are just now learning how to loosely join, so in a sense, it probably looks like high school, but it won't for long.
The net has accelerated social grouping and regrouping. We continue to create tools that increase that accelation and now social networking tools are being deployed to analyse these processes. Maybe they'll analyze the content as well as the connections, helping us understand the health of online communities in real-time. Was ETech just a bigger FOO Camp? Some seem to think it was to some extent, but I don't think there's any need to point fingers. Democracy will be important for online communities and equality, but patience, humility, grace and charity will make the difference as groups reach out to other groups.
Where are all these online communities leading us? I get the sense that eventually there will be a demand for democratic representation on the internet. We've used the net to get laid and make money, now we're using it to collaborate and make friends. What will we do with what we've learned from Deanspace? Soon we'll see local issues and politics addressed in online forums, not just in election cycles, but continually. Eventually municipalities and state governments may pick up on it and it could progress beyond that, but it also seems to me that this is in direct conflict with commercial globalization. Hopefully, even though commercial globalization is sucking the humanity from humanity, online communities can counteract it.
