One of the most disturbing Western trends is increasing social isolation through the impact of inter-mediating technologies, at the expense of direct interaction with other humans. Much of our modern lives are lived in non-connective spaces – such as air travel, commuting, impersonal shopping, passive entertainment and even single-person households.  But, in contrast, technology can also allow creation of digital spaces for shared interests and new digital communities.  So digital technology can be seen as either enriching/connecting or fragmenting society (and thus leading to narcissistic and even schizophrenic behavior), depending on your point of view.

To quote Nicholas Negroponte, the cultural impact of digital technology has been extraordinary pervasive, but is most evident in four main areas:   1) Growing Decentralization (more distributed info) 2) Growing Globalization (new transnational connections) 3) Increasing Harmonization (greater ability to connect across all boundaries) and 4) Increasing Empowerment (wider distribution of knowledge).  I would observe that these impacts have the potential of yielding either positive or negative outcomes, depending on how technology is utilized.

For example, the decrease of transaction costs and the resulting decline of middle management’s role in modern organizations has in fact led to increased individual empowerment in both business and political activities. The rise of non-geographic digital communities of interest or passion is a common pattern – and these types of groups are influencing increasing numbers of people.  One instance is the continuing evolution of the political dialogue Web site, MoveOn.org from a 2003 focus on simply policy discussion to more active 2004 involvement in political system change, e.g. actively shaping voter registration policies and paid voter/worker leave legislation.

Other digital communities have focused more on the underlying ‘rules of social engagement’ between digital participants, such as the Wikki movement (named for a Hawaiian phrase for ‘quick response’), where encyclopedias or other knowledge constructs of common meaning are built through open group interaction – much like open source software.  The basic Wikki rule is that anyone can change and edit common written materials as the Web site content evolves, but not completely erase the work of others (especially the entire site).  However, the ‘no erase’ mores are rules as often honored in the breach as in the observance, and Wikki Web site managers often reserve the ability to step in and restore ‘trashed’ site materials as necessary.  This combines a commitment to open dialogue with maintenance of the functionality of the process.   On the graphic arts side, DeviantArt.com supports both self-expression and building upon the work of others

A successful example of self-governing communities is the all-purpose and open enterprise known as Craigslist.org.  This Web site offers an enormous range of functional services, but accepts no banner advertising, no pop-up ads, requires no visitor registration and charges no fees, except to employers posting job offers – which account for $10 million in annual revenue for the Web site. In all, 57 cities have Craigslist.org sites, including 3 in Britain and 3 in Canada. Together, the combined sites attracted more than five million individual visitors in July 2004 alone, who together registered more than a billion page views. Most of the site policing is done by the actual users of Craigslist.org.  The rules are simple and they work, – all governed by the users themselves.

We are just at the beginning of a wave of self-organizing digital communities and only time will tell what shapes they will take – these are but a few examples…but it is clearly an open and rapidly evolving playing field, limited only by the range of human invention.

Comments may be made directly to Mr. Mack at tmack@wfs.org