Contemplating Shirky’s discussion of social dilemmas in Chapter 8 of his book. If I understand his thought, the evolution of community in the United States goes something like:
1. People lived in cities where everything was close in proximity, so therefore it was easy to form groups >
2. People moved to the suburbs and that made it more difficult and more expensive (transaction cost) to gather >
3. Technology has solved this problem. Tools such as Meetup have allowed groups like Stay-At-Home-Moms (groups that share common interest plus geography) to meet.
Don’t know if this is the place for opinions or thoughts - I think Shirky’s observations are one possible scenario of how things have happened. I’m not sure that suburbia is the reason for dissolution of community – I would say greed and its by-products are 100x the culprit. I also don’t think technology is the solution just because it has been a solution. Couldn’t a mom meet another mom in the grocery store just as easily as she did before? Is it just the case that she’s looking for that community online, so when the opportunity presents itself to strike up a conversation while inspecting a box of eggs, she doesn’t seize it because she has found her community somewhere else? Also – have people exchanged the time they would spend physically out in community to create community with being online to create online community.
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First, I can't think of a better place to post your own thoughts and opinions than your own blog.
ReplyDeleteNow on to the content...
I think you may be onto something with your observation, but I'm not convinced greed is the culprit. Shirky argues that time is one of the elements missing from live social networking, and I think he's right in a sense. For instance, I work full-time, volunteer for a few organizations, and attend school online. I don't have a lot of time for meeting up with friends. I do, however, have time to keep up with friends via Facebook so I'm not completely lost when we do meet up outside in the real world. My online social group allows me to spend "more" time with my friends.
I do agree that we still go to the grocery store and could certainly meet people there over a dozen eggs. In fact, I think it's a shame we don't. Conventional random conversation isn't as prevalent as it once was because people just don't trust anymore. I'm always friendly and conversational in public, but it isn't always well received, which makes it difficult to meet new people. If you can go online and find people instantly who share common interests, then it makes sense to do so, given time constraints and the number of people in the community you'd have to sort through otherwise.
I don't think Shirky is 100% right about suburbia being the problem. The suburbs are full of community centers and places to meet. Kids make it even easier for parents to meet new people in a live environment, with sports, PTA, boy and girl scouts, and so on.
Perhaps you and I can be trend-setters by forming an online group that promises to spend three times more time meeting people in public than we spend in the online group.
Definitely Shirky is oversimplifying things here. Unfortunately that tends to be a byproduct of the genre.
ReplyDeleteYou have some good ideas/points here. I wonder if you'll keep exploring this theme -- f2f generated vs virtual-generated community -- as we move forward. It's a pretty rich topic.