Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
I just got the book and haven't started reading it yet, but I have to say I
love the author photo insode the back cover!
  

    
I suspect it comes with a story. Tell all!
  

    
Sure I'm reading the book! But its not one you can swallow whole at
one sitting!
  

    
Couple of thoughts:

I wonder if these real-time, mobile electronics won't make Internet
communities more close-nit and local than they used to be.  For most
web sites and asynchronous forums like the Well, it doesn't matter too
much where in the world you are.  (Although differing time zones can
slow things down a bit.)  But the benefits of coordinating via
cellphone are more compelling if you're in the same city.

Also, there is a tendency for people in many Internet forums to
indulge in theory and analysis (e.g. this very message) rather than
reporting on what they're seeing.  It's very easy for "live coverage"
to get buried in all the discussion and rehashing of things reported by
others.  In order for something like amateur Internet journalism to
get off the ground, somehow it needs to get easier to search for
eyewitness reports.
  

    
You are reflecting how the most public parts of the Well work.

If you join and monitor the Rockies conference you will see 'close-nit
and local' and day to day real world things postings ad naseum (sorry.
Lots of it is a girl thing, being interested in discussing things
that bore me)

BUT even in the Rockies conference, where the core group actually live
in the same region, even within visiting distance, a large part of
the 'community' is made up of people who are distant.

I see nothing 'inherent' in this medium that encourages communicating
mostly with people nearby (same city)

In the days of only BBS's, there was, almost entirely caused by the
economic of local area dial up, the bulk of people online were from
one city. Outsiders could join, even become intimate with the local
group because of the miracle of electronic reach into local groups.

In fact, in my earliest use of the national Source, I watched people
from the same state try to sustain a discussion about their local
affairs. But they were submerged by others talking about every other
thing under the sun. In fact I recall two guys trying to talk about
Rhode Island politics, and I said to myself - this is wierd. Logging
onto a national system to talk about local politics. THAT as much
as anything else pursuaded me to set up a local BBS to talk local
issues. And it worked.


BUT the Internet makes that very difficult - to localize group dynamics.
Unless, with considerable skill those who set up an ISP operating,
with email, and some form of conferencing, structure it to encourage
such localization - even if everyone is distant from the server.

I say again - 'virtual communities' are not natural. They have to be
created,  grown, and nurtured, over time. And the key ingredient
always will be 'virtual community leaders' - whether they function
as moderators, or those who emerge from a group and just 'lead'
naturally, or that they are *very* advanced techs who can structure
their systems to support group dynamics, and not be shaped by the
system they are on.

It will be a long time before we see good, sustainable, online
communities. And it won't be a function of gadgets.
  

    
i'm a left coast well person.
i'm an early morning person.
there are few people on when i have the most time to spend online.
still, the relative immediacy of comments that have been posted (some in
response to mine) makes it seem as if we're having a conversation.

there is a send function on the well, something like chat. i use that when
folks i know well are online or to ask a question if the poster is
available. but,  the reasoned posts that are not real time responses tend to
be more personal, i think.

i came to the well, years ago, because of the legendarily high level of
conversation available here and the sense of community that goes beyond LOL
or ROTFL comments. i've travelled across the country to meet with other well
folks. i've bozofiltered others so that i never have to read their posts
again.

if i left the well, it would be like moving away and never being able to see
my friends again. guess i'll be here as long as it is alive and i am.

it was wonderful to walk into this place and find the community fully grown.
if i knew how to replicate it elsewhere, i would.
if i knew where there was another one, i might go there, too.
  

    
Dave, I can relate to your comments.

When I first came to the WELL, dialing in from Texas, I found it was 
difficult to participate in conversations, it was like I wasn't there for 
some people. Eventually saw that the difference was in local contact: for 
many, if they hadn't met you f2f, you didn't have the same presence. After I 
started meeting other WELL people offline the dynamics changed. This seemed 
less true over time as the WELL became more of a national system and a 
smaller percentage of its denizens had physical contact. Also less true as 
people got more comfy with the concept of disembodied relationships.

Also re. rockies: I started hanging out in the conf when I saw how active and 
vibrant it was, and around that time I started traveling to Colorado, and 
eventually moved there. Based on the conf I had expected to find an active 
physical community where people met and hung out regularly. I was surprised 
to find that wasn't the case, in fact it was supremely difficult to arrange a 
social gathering with the members of the conf who were in close proximity. 
Like the connection didn't really transfer offline.
  

    
In regard to the author's photo, yes there is a story.

I've had a history of getting irritated at Justin Hall for not picking up 
on my signals when we were travelling. In Stockholm, walking across a 
rather uninhabited park in a remote part of town, he tried approaching the 
only woman who was walking across the park, in order to get her to take 
our picture. He did this by walking toward her, holding the camera out, 
and shouting, "excuse me!" in English. She immediately put her head down 
and started walking rather more quickly away from us. Justin responded by 
running toward her, shouting more loudly. I physically collared the lad 
before he could frighten the woman even more. Then he wanted to walk down 
an alley and insisted on loudly discussing my subtle suggestion that we 
choose another route, so I had to point out that the several gentlemen 
doing some kind of whispered deal over merchandise located in the trunk of 
a taxicab were putting out "leave us alone" vibes.

In Tokyo, I kept getting annoyed because Justin would often disappear in a 
crowd. At Shinjuku station, I got really pissed because as soon as we 
surfaced on the street, I looked up at the incredible sight of Shinjuku at 
night, and when I looked down, he was gone. When he reappeared, he said: 
"I just wanted to get a good angle for a photograph."

All is forgiven, Justin.
  

    
BTW, although there is not yet, maybe never, a SF Chronicle review, Smart 
Mobs is number nine on the SF Bay Area nonfiction bestseller list today.
  

    
In regard to the relationship between mobile flocking and online 
communities, there are obviously different affordances: On the Internet, 
people can connect with people they don't know, never met, and are 
physically distant, because they share an affinity -- a need to buy or 
sell Meissen figurines, argue about the politics of intellectual property 
law, trade jokes, offer support to others who have the same illness, etc. 
As has happened with the Well and many other online communities, sometimes 
people who meet through shared affinities online arrange to meet face to 
face, and sometimes ftf communities overlap with online communities 
(Rockies, for example).

For the most part, the mobile telephone has been a more personal and 
private device, used almost exclusively for communicating with people you 
already know. Indeed, if people start getting calls and messages from too 
many strangers, they are likely to turn their telephones off.

However, I have personally witnessed a couple of early indicators that may 
point to a blurring or interpenetration of these boundaries. In Sweden, an 
online community called Lunarstorm has an astonishing 70% of ALL the 15-25 
year olds in Sweden. Each member gets an email account (many Lunarstorm 
members ONLY have a lunarmail account, not an Internet address), a web 
page where they can display their photographs and link to their favorite 
other Lunarstorm member pages, a message board, and a chat room. For the 
past year, Lunarstorm members have been able to keep in touch via SMS -- 
so when members of the online community leave their desktop computers at 
home or office, they can stay in touch as they move around. 

In Brazil, over 400,000 people in the same age group have joined what they 
call "the Blah! community" over the first four months of its existence. 
Each member gets a screen name that disguises his or her real identity and 
phone number, a profile they can fill out, a means of searching for other 
members who fit designated profile criteria. When a Blah! member gets a 
text message from a stranger, he or she can answer via screen name, answer 
via real name and number, or block all further messages from that number. 
Totally about flirting. Yet they call it a "community," and have parties 
all over Brazil, with hundreds of people standing around a beach or 
nightclub, glancing between their mobile telephone screens and the people 
around them, trying to guess whether the person they are flirting with is 
the person standing next to them.

More about Blah!: <http://www.smartmobs.com/archives/000244.html>
  

    
Thanks for the photo story, Howard.

And a reminder to those following along on the Web but not on the Well: you
can contribute to the discussion or ask a question (at the moderators'
discretion) by dropping a note to inkwell-hosts@well.com .

Near the end of *The Virtual Community*, as I recall, you talked about
commodification and what it might od to any public sphere, Howard. Are there
the same sort of concerns to be had in the world of smart mobs? What's
needed to preserve a public sphere (which I gather you argue is necessary
for the Net to facilitate democratic institutions and processes)?
  

    
I'm not at all sure about how mobile communication technologies and their 
use for collective action will affect the public sphere. Clearly, 
reputation systems have some connection, but the foundations of the public 
sphere are public information (we're losing that with the privatization of 
a great deal of public information and the lockdown of other information 
post 9-11), an informed population (with school boards concentrating on 
getting evolution out of schools and prayers in schools, I don't have high 
hopes for the public education system improving this aspect), and open 
discourse (and we're seeing a chilling of dissent, which isn't healthy for 
public discourse).

In regard to the open versus closed systems issues I raised above 
regarding information associated with products and places, that could be 
construed as a public sphere issue. If citizens can communicate about the 
crime or unemployment rates in specific locations, about the political or 
health implications of specific products, etc., then we might see an 
extension of the public sphere into areas where it was previously locked 
out.

I'm considerably less optimistic about the future of open, democratic, 
informed public discourse in 2002 than I was in 1992. Do I need to explain 
why?
  

    
Speaking of the public sphere, we have a few days as citizens to make our 
comments to the FCC public in regard to the Broadcast Flag proposal. The 
blog entry at <http://www.smartmobs.com/archives/000411.html> gives 
details and links. It takes a few minutes to fill out the comment form at 
the Center for Democracy and Technology site, which will become part of 
the FCC public docket. This is not another email petition. This is our 
chance to make our voices heard. Excerpt below is from the New Yorkers for 
Fair Use site.

    The FCC is considering a proposal that digital televisions be required 
to work only according to the rules set by Hollywood, through the use of a 
"broadcast flag" assigned to digital TV broadcasts.

    Through the deliberations of a group called the Broadcast Protection 
Discussion Group which assiduously discounted the public's rights to use 
flexible information technology, Hollywood and leading technology players 
have devised a plan that would only allow "professionals" to have 
fully-functional devices for processing digital broadcast materials.

    Hollywood and content producers must not be allowed to determine the 
rights of the public to use flexible information technology. The idea of 
the broadcast flag is to implement universal content control and abolish 
the right of free citizens to own effective tools for employing digital 
content in useful ways. The broadcast flag is theft. 
  

    
I've been reading the book. 

The question that haunts me is: Would these things happen anyway?

Does the new technology truly create new bahaviors, or does it just
provide a new way to exercise the old behaviors?  

Like the recent events in Nigeria.  Did the texting cause the riots,
or would they have happened without texting?  Would someone have run
down the street shouting? Would people have called each other on land
lines? beat drums?  Or, without texting, would there have been no riot?
  

    
When it comes to collective action, several variables can alter what is 
possible, each of which can be affected by technologies if and only if 
they increase human capabilities past a triggering value:

1.  The number of people who can be organized and mobilized.
2.  The kind of people who can be organized and mobilized.
3.  The speed with which people can be organized and mobilized.

Clearly, alphabets, printing presses, the telegraph, the Internet, mobile 
telephones change these thresholds in different ways. In regard to events 
like riots, the number of people -- and the kind of people, in regard to 
their political convictions and how heated they are feeling -- who can be 
summoned within a critical time interval is key. Not enough people -- no 
riot. Not enough people assembled during a critical interval -- no riot. 
If the people who are assembled at the same place during the critical 
interval aren't the people who feel most heated about the issue -- no 
riot.
  

    
I'm on the evite list for a party that happens somewhere in san 
francisco every week.  I get my email notice, then I can rsvp to the 
party, check the map, see who else is going on the website.

An interesting thing happened this morning though.  I got an evite from 
someone on that list who is having a party this weekend at her 'new pad' 
which happens to be just down the block from where I live.  I'm supposed 
to wear a ski hat to this one.  

I suppose we could all be doing this with text messaging on our
cellphones, but we're still living in the old form factor.
  

    
In Rwanda, the medium was radio. Hard to believe that the killings could
have been any worse with smart mobbing. But maybe it would be easier in some
other land to cultivate that sort of violence with the new tech -- or maybe
it would be easier to mobilize to halt it.

One of the things I'm seeing in this picture is how important it is to have
social structures in place that can be used for progressive ends. When Phil
Agre used to write The Network Observer, its epigraph was a bit from Ralph
Reed, of the Christian Coalition:

  You have to organize, organize, organize,
  and build and build, and train and train,
  so that there is a permanent, vibrant
  structure of which people can be part.
  

    
>>still living in the old form factor.

This is what interests me.  When do we tip across the fulcrum to move
to a new method/medium?   ... obviously, when we perceive that it
benefits us... But, why is that such a short time for some things and
such a long time for others? 

Howard - thanks for your post above. The number + kind + speed formula
makes sense to me.  
  

    
Those are indeed what I think are the interesting questions these days, 
Marla. In the biblio to chapter two, you'll see that I cite an interesting 
paper Grannovetter wrote about thresholds for mob action, and some work 
that Bernardo Huberman cited in regard to the demonstrations that brought 
down -- swiftly and in most cases peacefully -- the remaining Communist 
governments of Eastern Europe. But what we really know about the formation 
of mobs, and factors that can prevent them from forming, about how people 
choose to cooperate, overcome barriers to cooperation, fail to cooperate, 
the boundary conditions for trust to exist in different kinds of groups, 
the rate at which cooperation systems can change without fracturing -- 
lots of interesting work in experimental economics, evolutionary biology, 
sociology of common pool resources is beginning to converge, if not on 
common answers, but a recognition that these different sciences have been 
pursuing the same questions of collective action.
  

    
<hat="devil's advocate">I'm reflecting a little, as I think back through the
discussion here, on the kinds of selectivity that smart mobbing allows for
or amplifies, and the consequences of that sort of collective action for
community.

On the one hand, swarming is (in part) like persons finding one another, and
so stands to be (potentially) a kind of community enhancer, since like-
finding-like is one sort of community precursor.

But the peer-to-peer nature of smart mobbing also carries with it a form of
the "Daily Me" problem that has been worried to death about the Net.

(I think the term was originally Negroponte's. Overview of the issues:
September/October EDUCAUSE Review:
http://www.educause.edu/pub/er/erm02/erm025w.asp
Anti "daily me" (or at least cautionary): Cass Sunstein,
http://www.law.uchicago.edu/news/sunstein_dailyme.html
Pro "daily me": J.D. Lasica, http://www.ojr.org/ojr/lasica/1017779142.php
and http://www.well.com/~jd/personalization.html and
http://www.well.com/~jd/OJR-second-coming.html )

The story goes that, in the golden days now past, people hung out in public
spaces -- on front porches, cruising the main drag, in beauty parlors and
coffee shops -- and community emerged out of their interaction with diverse,
geographically near, persons. And all that goes by the boards with swarming,
smart, peer-to-peer mobbing technology.

</hat>

Is that fair? (Does it make any sense?) I'm not convinced it's right, but it
nags at me as I think about where things go from here with these devices and
infrastructures and about what we should be doing in relation to them.
  

    
I reach for my grain of salt whenever someone hauls out the old "community 
used to be warm and folks, but new-fangled gadgets are making us zombies." 


First response: Well, duh! It's about time people noticed the alienating 
effects of printing presses, automobiles, and the urge to move away from 
your small-minded neighbors who are so earnestly discussing all the 
aspects of your sex life and religious beliefs across the back fence.

Second response: Can we have something slightly more systematic than 
anecdotal evidence to base this "Internet is balkanizing us! Flee! Flee!" 
charge? I think we're beginning to see some scholarship and research in 
work such as the recently published "Internet in Everyday Life," edited by 
Wellman and Haythorthwaite.

Third response: What segment of the population are we talking about here, 
when we refer to those poor sophisticates whose highly-attuned online 
filters bring them only news of their narrow interests? The apparent 
minority who don't think tax breaks for the top 1% of society are 
definitely a hot policy issue? The people who don't spend their time 
sitting slack-jawed in front of the tube, or whose idea of political 
discourse is talk radio? It seems to me that the act of getting up out of 
your chair and reading a blog or two about something that interests you 
is, in itself, a small act of conscious rebellion.

Fourth response: Are there others like me whose online activities 
constantly leads us away from what we thought we were interested in? Isn't 
the nature of links in a small-world network destined to lead our 
attention away from our initial narrow interests?

Finally: Yes, the kind of small-group interactions we are seeing with SMS 
is a way of reinforcing behavior within a small group of people who 
already know each other. The question I raise in Smart Mobs is whether p2p 
methodologies and reputation systems will enable us to find common cause 
with people in our ftf environment, people who previously had been 
strangers -- the way we find ourselves discussing issues of mutual 
interest with far away strangers via environments like the Well?

The issue of what "community" is, how to define it and study it, how it 
changes, how to evaluate those changes, and the tradeoff between new 
connections and new opportunities for alienation afforded by new 
communication technologies is something I tried to address in the chapter 
I wrote for the MIT Press revised 2001 edition of "The Virtual Community."
  

    

I really agree about the need for scholarly research.

The idea that the Net must inevitably narrow individual
perspectives and sort the world's population into like-minded
groups (or mobs) strikes me as clearly wrong.

This fear naturally arises, I think, because there is nothing
built into the technology of the Net that would *prevent* such an
outcome. And we have this inborn fear of uncertainty and tend to
obsess about negative possibilities. (Who ever worried about a
future that might be too good?)

But the point is really one Howard makes in the book -- that these
new technologies are not necessarily good, or bad. The technology
does not determine what we choose to do with it. But choices are
being made.

The best way to address the doubts and fears of the future is to
become informed, and become involved.
  

    
In a way, the "Internet narrows our sources of information" is a kind of 
big lie, isn't it? As if relying on the mass media is going to continue to 
enrich a diversity of thought and opinion!

There isn't one blog. There are half a million blogs.

And now moblogs.
  

    

This is from one of the links (bumbaugh) posted above:

    But in the midst of the celebration, we should also
    be aware of the potential risks. As a result of the
    Internet and other technological developments, many
    people are increasingly engaged in the process of
    "personalization," by which they ensure they will be
    exposed to topics and points of view of their own
    choosing.

      -- http://www.law.uchicago.edu/news/sunstein_dailyme.html

What strikes me as funny is the idea that the ability to select
for topics and points of view is something new brought to us by
the internet (and other technological developments). Hasn't a
similar ability to choose existed for many decades (at least)?

Even in markets devoid of competitive news sources, one has
always had the option of simply _not paying attention._ The
real difference, I think, is that now one has so many more
sources from which to choose. (Including, of course, potentially
unqualified sources.)

And, speaking of blogs, moblogs and the like, it is interesting
to view them in contrast to this frightening possibility (from
the article above):

    People are even able to create what has been called
    "the Daily Me" - a newspaper in which you include those
    topics and points of view you wish to encounter and that
    excludes material you find boring or irritating.

I think it hard to argue that blogs aren't highly personal, both
in their production and their consumption. And yet they are also
a great source of surprise -- offering exactly the sorts of
'unanticipated encounters' that the article suggests personal
choice would remove.
  

    
Seems to me that when I was young (50's & 60's) I could learn a lot
about a person by asking, "Where are you from?"

As I got older, it seemed that the more important question was "When
are you from?"  Things like the generation gap, Kennedy's assination,
the Moon Walk, Rock and Roll music, the Viet Nam war, etc. defined
people more than geography.

Now, society seems more fragmented to me. The question, "What do you
do?" is about as good as I can think of to get a sumarizing answer. 

I do think that technology and the immediacy of information have taken
us from where to when to what.

Still, human nature hasn't really changed very much, if any. There
have always been people who were comfortable and lacked desire to move
out of their geography of their era or their experiences. With multiple
bands of radio stations, plenty of narrowly defined television
channels, and innumerable Web sites, some people settle into what they
like and stay there. Ignorance is of no consequence to them.

Others, like myself and like Howard mentions above are full of
curiousity. Links beg us to click and follow and learn. Realizing that
generalizations are always false, I still think that there are people
of a curious nature that continually try to expand their knowledge base
regardless of the media involved. 

Now we have yet another emerging medium. Mobile telephone text. I'm
wondering if the next best information gathering question may be, "Who
do you text?"