The next step is a discussion of the impact of the new local on communities. What does this mean for this particular social entity? Let's chew on this for a week or two (or three).
Good question Walter and just a comment – Thank you for your co-ordination– even if nothing comes of this isn’t it a wonderful journey folks?
Impact on local communities ….. More Trevor ramblings ….
I think we need to think about what we mean by communities. Maybe we will have to re-define communities as a result of re-defining local. In fact I suspect that is an inevitable consequence of a new definition of local.
A community can be a community ‘geographically’ or a community of ‘interest’ through a topic e.g. a community of soccer fans!! There may indeed be other types of community.
I think what is making me think about redefining ‘local’ is the new technology which makes it possible to communicate with people all round the world at the touch of a key board. It does not matter where that person lives – the point is we have ‘connected.’ In the ‘old days’ this ‘connection’ was largely a physical presence with another human being and the community therefore tended to be described as a gathering of people from a given geographical areas – i.e. the physical presence. The new technology provides an exciting opportunity to develop new ‘communities’ in my opinion. I can search now on the web for people with a common interest that I have and within seconds I can follow search engine results to discover a whole lot of folks who may – or may not - become part of a new ‘community.’
With this of course there are dangers. We need to be aware of the potential abuse of this new found power. There will be those who wish to develop communities for the wrong reasons and we must go into this whole arena with our eyes wide open. I am not a believer in censorship or limiting the freedom of people. We have to find ways of ensuring security is not threatened by these new possibilities.
I remain optimistic about this through my faith. God provides us the tools and we humans make the choice to either abuse or cherish that power. I respect and value the power and hope that society ensures there are enough safeguards built in so that good always comes out on top.
Thank you for your leadership, Walter, without it we wouldn't be here. And thanks, Trevor, for staying active.
Some impact of the new local I've seen in my remote corner of Montana.
* It's becoming less and less remote. An increasing number of people here are using broadband, or make their money elsewhere - as do I. My nearest neighbor makes her living on eBay, but I almost never speak with her.
* My brother-in-law lives a thousand miles away, but stays in touch with my wife at least weekly on the phone and through email. Our "local community" is already "new local".
It's late, and time for bed - but have you read or listened to "The Google Story". This might be worth a thread of its own were we more active with our blogging here.
Visiting relatives in Wisconsin, one of them showed me some very funny videos on video.google.com. When browsing the Madison Barnes & Noble, I picked up the audio version of the book to listen to on the long drive home.
This amazing company reminded me why it's so exciting to be in the technology field, and the dramatic impact these technologies are having. There is a profound effect that comes from people being able to find each other around the globe with such easy access to each other. The lateness of the evening me grasping for inspiration to write of the profoundness of the impact demonstrated in the rapid and amazing growth of this company built on the technologies making "The New Local" even possible, and which I could see is taking part in the construction of "The New Local" in a way I can cheer and applaud.
Great comments, Paul, I've been looking at some of the same things. Whether it's old local or new local, it's all about local. How to make it better. There was bad old local. Parochial, restrictive, narrow, limited, prejudiced, ignorant, close-minded. And there was beautiful old local - neighborly, supportive, familiar, rich in depth of relationships, etc.
I'm seeing quite a bit of interface with old and new local -- largely in the efforts of some to revive some old local domains that have been suffering. I'm part of the local Main Street Association in my small town of Stevensville, Montana, which is part of a national organization to revive small town Main Streets. They have a website, they use some email, and they communicate with other Main Street Associations to make it better. But I can tell, they need to get more serious with new local technologies to really optimize their chances of making something happen. New local google-search for websites, New local discussion forums. If they don't, they'll suffer.
Some "old local" communities are recognizing the importance. I just found out from a friend that he has fibre optic cable coming into his home in Katonah, NY -- a small town in New York. The old local communities need to promote and advocate the new local technologies to make them significant. So they can have a place in the "participation age" folks in the technology communities are seeing.
I regard a community as any group of people (or animals, but we're talking about humans here) that shares some kind of interaction. It doesn't really matter what the medium is – it could be folks living on the same street, folks working in the same building, folks drinking in the same pub or folks who have never met but who communicate via the internet. Typically, as a community grows, it develops it's own set of norms, hierarchies and it's sense of, “That's the way we do things around here.”
Internet technology obviously has a huge impact. It's a way of cementing family or friendship ties. For example, this morning I (living in the UK) e-mailed my wife's cousin Johnny (who lives in Australia) a link to my web site which has some pictures of a family get together we had recently – and I got a reply in 30 minutes! As little as 10 years ago, this would have been unthinkable: I'd have been getting hard copies of the pictures from the chemist and sending them snail mail at some expense to Australia. Today, Johnny can use the internet to keep in touch, to arrange cheap trips back to the UK etc.
This begs the question. Even 10 years ago, moving to the other side of the world would have been a major decision. It still is, of course, but the role of technology is that it makes it easier to say “Yes” to that choice. Today, you can use the internet, a webcam, e-mail and so forth to distance yourself as far as it's humanly possible to but still stay in touch and still stay a member of a community. The positive thing, to me, is that people can now be more adventurous about major lifestyle decisions like this because they know that the technology will help them ease the change. That's great.
In a work context, it also means that those old geographical issues start to disappear. Many companies now put R&D centres in most major continents. They know the technology allows them to share stuff almost instantly and this also gives them 24 / 24 R&D work because someone somewhere is beavering away! What's interesting, though, is that many companies are now realising that “globalisation” isn't nearly as simple as they first thought. Content preferences variy (e.g. Coca Cola has different recipes around the world); style preferences varies (advertisers know that people don't appreciate hearing the message in the same way the world over); and even GE has set up Europe and Asian HQ's as it realises America can't run the world – although I could have told them that when I left in the mid-90's, but that's another story...
Of course, this still raises the issue that it's how you use the technology and how as humans we feel about the community that matters. You can move to the other side of the world or the other side of town and lose contact, either deliberately (if you choose) or by neglect (if you just let things slip). And the technology that's binding the group together can still give rise to crime and abuse as in the “olden days” - witness “grooming” or internet cons (the good old Nigerian grants with a $26m left sloshing around, for heaven's sake!) or the ways people use it to publish distorted, biased, bigoted or plain misleading information / propaganda. Developing Paul's thought, I think that unfortunately what we see is new crime and new abuse replacing old crime and old abuse.
I think Harold made a great remark when he brought up the subject of participation. I'm a huge believer in the idea that technology is little more than an enabler. It has to have some kind of purpose, use, objective. It strikes me as naïve and complacent to say that because all this technology exists we should become better communicators and participators, better informed and more aware of what's going on. Most people, when confronted with a plethora of choice, either switch off completely or stick to their established, plain vanilla choice. So, the technology in many ways just makes it more importantly that we understand how to build communities, involve people, enthuse them and all the old skills, in a modern way. The technology is changing the world but we must ensure we use the technology to change the world in a way we want and that is positive.
Great comments all - this is a brilliant virtual team!
Guys - how about the following as an example of The New Local?
I am about to publish a book along with two co-authors - one in Spain; one in the States; - me in England.
The three of us have never actually met and yet we have built up a relationship based on openness and trust over the last year to a point where we have collaborated to write a book which we will publish in the next two months. All done virtually!
My point is NOT to plug the book. The point is this is a fantastic practical living example of the New Local
A few years back it would have been almost impossible to do this based purely on written interaction of three people thousands of miles apart.
No meetings; no detailed plan; no new money; no strategy; no training; just passion, openness trust and mutual respect to share around the work fairly.
It is just about 'relationship building' in my opinion.
Wow, great stuff. Brilliant post, Mark, it'll take a few more readings to digest it properly. And Trevor's book with people he's never met. Amazing. A highschool friend at the other end of the country suggested we might collaborate on his book idea - something I hadn't considered before - but imagine writing a book with folks in three different countries? Total New Local in action!
I wasn't actually expecting there to be any new comments here... I just had a thought about Walter's discussion topic - impact of the new local on communities.
Politics came to mind.
There's an organization called MoveOn.org, whether you like it or not, it's had a major impact on politics in the U.S. There's been a lot of talk about the impact of blogs on journalism.
There are two communities to address. There are the "new local" communities that got started on the internet, the oldest of which can only be in their late teens (internet zero date according to some is 1996). And there are "old local" communities that got started at a geographical location on earth, usually quite a while ago, but not necessarily.
The "new local" communities are flexing their muscles. Expect them to have an even larger impact on the 2008 elections than they did on 2004. I don't know if you remember swiftboat.com, but it might be argued that this suspect website might have struck the deathblow to John Kerry's race. Increasingly, campaigns, including smaller community ones, will be fought on the internet with blogs playing a huge role.
As the "new local" communities get more organized and self-aware, they're going to change the landscape. Big time. And the changes might even look like a catastrophe if you just measure the depth, breadth, and speed of the changes. Tectonic shifts. These will have a major impact on the old local communities.
Watching some old movies, sometimes it might seem that people "out west" were isolated and alone, incredibly self-sufficient. But in truth, they were incredibly dependent on the world economy. News from the outside world was an important commodity. Traders coming through brought goods and services. They themselves all came from elsewhere. If you read about the Native Americans, trading was an integral part of their lives even before the arrival of the White Man.
The point is that all local communities, "new" or "old", are connected to the greater community. The new technologies speed up this connection. Perhaps the real "new local" is going to be planetary - the much talked about Global Village. But an amorphous homogenous global culture doesn't seem likely, we'll still have local communities - even if their "place" is only a website address. But what is the appropriate politics for virtual communities? What is the appropriate governance? How is this going to impact our politics? Will we be seeing something even more profound than the Magna Carta or Bill or Rights happening in our lifetimes?
Back from an extended absence - sorry to be awol for awhile. Two major initiatives underway requiring so MUCH time. My brain simply hasn't been up to the task of being able to provide logical and coherent comments. (As if it ever was :) Anyway, I will look forward to seeing your book Trevor. What is the subject matter?
Paul - the point you bring up about using the new local to improve the old local is compelling. I think that in the end that is what we should all strive for. It is the present, the real, the physical manifestation of our presence that is our day to day life. That is what the old local is to me. How can I meld the new and old to refine NOW.
Mark - you story about communicating with your distant family in 30 minutes hits close to home. My daughter and first child is leaving home for college next year and I can already tell you that my anxiety over the event is somewhat lessened by the fact that I know I will be able to communicate with her daily via email or VOIP if I want, not to mention the possibility of adding webcams on each end.
I am in agreement that the new local will speed the pace of change. Yet all these discrete channels of interests and thoughts also tend to create a larger single community as well. This does pose some inherent risks in addition to the benefits. Bad ideas and inaccurate information can spread rapidly and cause massive changes and results instantly - before they they can be dispelled. (Witness the infamous urban legends that continue to recycle themselves). I am also reminded of a plot angle in a science fiction classic now probably 25 years old called Ender's Game in which two genius level kids influenced global viewpoints by adopting pyseudonyms and posing as adults and posting on "the nets." On one hand the plot highlighted the ability of an idea to stand on its own merit yet on another level it is highly disturbing that two people could have such influence so rapidly. I remember thinking when I read it that the concept was far fetched. Today, I would say it is not that far a stretch.
So it is important to utilize the new local in the right way in order to impact the old local in the best way. There is some value in letting ideas and concepts simmer over time. One is less likely to make a poor decision based upon emotion or bad information. One of the reason the US has both a popluar vote and an electoral college is that our founding fathers felt that in order to preserve the structure of the constitution and framework of the government they had to protect again flash judgement or emotionally based action. Theoretically, the electoral college is supposed to be an "informed" electorate and carry more weight than the popular vote - who they preceived would vote for issues of the moment rather than considering the issues impact on the nation on a long term basis. Given that some of our native peoples in North America had procedures in place whereby they would not make major changes to the laws and traditions of the tribe until they had considered an issues impact on the next seven generations, this would seem to be a sound judgement.
As far as voting in in our new local that is a dicussion for another day. I had a friend, Tim Stryker, founder of the Major BBS by Galacticomm, who very much espoused e-voting. This dates me but it does remind me to mention that the internet was birthed way before 1996.
Good to be back. Thanks for everyone's patience with my absence!
Trevor - I have installed Skype so I will contact you soon. -Walter
7 comments:
Good question Walter and just a comment – Thank you for your co-ordination– even if nothing comes of this isn’t it a wonderful journey folks?
Impact on local communities ….. More Trevor ramblings ….
I think we need to think about what we mean by communities. Maybe we will have to re-define communities as a result of re-defining local. In fact I suspect that is an inevitable consequence of a new definition of local.
A community can be a community ‘geographically’ or a community of ‘interest’ through a topic e.g. a community of soccer fans!! There may indeed be other types of community.
I think what is making me think about redefining ‘local’ is the new technology which makes it possible to communicate with people all round the world at the touch of a key board. It does not matter where that person lives – the point is we have ‘connected.’ In the ‘old days’ this ‘connection’ was largely a physical presence with another human being and the community therefore tended to be described as a gathering of people from a given geographical areas – i.e. the physical presence. The new technology provides an exciting opportunity to develop new ‘communities’ in my opinion. I can search now on the web for people with a common interest that I have and within seconds I can follow search engine results to discover a whole lot of folks who may – or may not - become part of a new ‘community.’
With this of course there are dangers. We need to be aware of the potential abuse of this new found power. There will be those who wish to develop communities for the wrong reasons and we must go into this whole arena with our eyes wide open. I am not a believer in censorship or limiting the freedom of people. We have to find ways of ensuring security is not threatened by these new possibilities.
I remain optimistic about this through my faith. God provides us the tools and we humans make the choice to either abuse or cherish that power. I respect and value the power and hope that society ensures there are enough safeguards built in so that good always comes out on top.
Thank you for your leadership, Walter, without it we wouldn't be here. And thanks, Trevor, for staying active.
Some impact of the new local I've seen in my remote corner of Montana.
* It's becoming less and less remote. An increasing number of people here are using broadband, or make their money elsewhere - as do I. My nearest neighbor makes her living on eBay, but I almost never speak with her.
* My brother-in-law lives a thousand miles away, but stays in touch with my wife at least weekly on the phone and through email. Our "local community" is already "new local".
It's late, and time for bed - but have you read or listened to "The Google Story". This might be worth a thread of its own were we more active with our blogging here.
Visiting relatives in Wisconsin, one of them showed me some very funny videos on video.google.com. When browsing the Madison Barnes & Noble, I picked up the audio version of the book to listen to on the long drive home.
This amazing company reminded me why it's so exciting to be in the technology field, and the dramatic impact these technologies are having. There is a profound effect that comes from people being able to find each other around the globe with such easy access to each other. The lateness of the evening me grasping for inspiration to write of the profoundness of the impact demonstrated in the rapid and amazing growth of this company built on the technologies making "The New Local" even possible, and which I could see is taking part in the construction of "The New Local" in a way I can cheer and applaud.
Great comments, Paul, I've been looking at some of the same things. Whether it's old local or new local, it's all about local. How to make it better. There was bad old local. Parochial, restrictive, narrow, limited, prejudiced, ignorant, close-minded. And there was beautiful old local - neighborly, supportive, familiar, rich in depth of relationships, etc.
I'm seeing quite a bit of interface with old and new local -- largely in the efforts of some to revive some old local domains that have been suffering. I'm part of the local Main Street Association in my small town of Stevensville, Montana, which is part of a national organization to revive small town Main Streets. They have a website, they use some email, and they communicate with other Main Street Associations to make it better. But I can tell, they need to get more serious with new local technologies to really optimize their chances of making something happen. New local google-search for websites, New local discussion forums. If they don't, they'll suffer.
Some "old local" communities are recognizing the importance. I just found out from a friend that he has fibre optic cable coming into his home in Katonah, NY -- a small town in New York. The old local communities need to promote and advocate the new local technologies to make them significant. So they can have a place in the "participation age" folks in the technology communities are seeing.
Great post, Paul.
I regard a community as any group of people (or animals, but we're talking about humans here) that shares some kind of interaction. It doesn't really matter what the medium is – it could be folks living on the same street, folks working in the same building, folks drinking in the same pub or folks who have never met but who communicate via the internet. Typically, as a community grows, it develops it's own set of norms, hierarchies and it's sense of, “That's the way we do things around here.”
Internet technology obviously has a huge impact. It's a way of cementing family or friendship ties. For example, this morning I (living in the UK) e-mailed my wife's cousin Johnny (who lives in Australia) a link to my web site which has some pictures of a family get together we had recently – and I got a reply in 30 minutes! As little as 10 years ago, this would have been unthinkable: I'd have been getting hard copies of the pictures from the chemist and sending them snail mail at some expense to Australia. Today, Johnny can use the internet to keep in touch, to arrange cheap trips back to the UK etc.
This begs the question. Even 10 years ago, moving to the other side of the world would have been a major decision. It still is, of course, but the role of technology is that it makes it easier to say “Yes” to that choice. Today, you can use the internet, a webcam, e-mail and so forth to distance yourself as far as it's humanly possible to but still stay in touch and still stay a member of a community. The positive thing, to me, is that people can now be more adventurous about major lifestyle decisions like this because they know that the technology will help them ease the change. That's great.
In a work context, it also means that those old geographical issues start to disappear. Many companies now put R&D centres in most major continents. They know the technology allows them to share stuff almost instantly and this also gives them 24 / 24 R&D work because someone somewhere is beavering away! What's interesting, though, is that many companies are now realising that “globalisation” isn't nearly as simple as they first thought. Content preferences variy (e.g. Coca Cola has different recipes around the world); style preferences varies (advertisers know that people don't appreciate hearing the message in the same way the world over); and even GE has set up Europe and Asian HQ's as it realises America can't run the world – although I could have told them that when I left in the mid-90's, but that's another story...
Of course, this still raises the issue that it's how you use the technology and how as humans we feel about the community that matters. You can move to the other side of the world or the other side of town and lose contact, either deliberately (if you choose) or by neglect (if you just let things slip). And the technology that's binding the group together can still give rise to crime and abuse as in the “olden days” - witness “grooming” or internet cons (the good old Nigerian grants with a $26m left sloshing around, for heaven's sake!) or the ways people use it to publish distorted, biased, bigoted or plain misleading information / propaganda. Developing Paul's thought, I think that unfortunately what we see is new crime and new abuse replacing old crime and old abuse.
I think Harold made a great remark when he brought up the subject of participation. I'm a huge believer in the idea that technology is little more than an enabler. It has to have some kind of purpose, use, objective. It strikes me as naïve and complacent to say that because all this technology exists we should become better communicators and participators, better informed and more aware of what's going on. Most people, when confronted with a plethora of choice, either switch off completely or stick to their established, plain vanilla choice. So, the technology in many ways just makes it more importantly that we understand how to build communities, involve people, enthuse them and all the old skills, in a modern way. The technology is changing the world but we must ensure we use the technology to change the world in a way we want and that is positive.
Great comments all - this is a brilliant virtual team!
Guys - how about the following as an example of The New Local?
I am about to publish a book along with two co-authors - one in Spain; one in the States; - me in England.
The three of us have never actually met and yet we have built up a relationship based on openness and trust over the last year to a point where we have collaborated to write a book which we will publish in the next two months. All done virtually!
My point is NOT to plug the book. The point is this is a fantastic practical living example of the New Local
A few years back it would have been almost impossible to do this based purely on written interaction of three people thousands of miles apart.
No meetings; no detailed plan; no new money; no strategy; no training; just passion, openness trust and mutual respect to share around the work fairly.
It is just about 'relationship building' in my opinion.
Just thought I would share that :-)
Wow, great stuff. Brilliant post, Mark, it'll take a few more readings to digest it properly. And Trevor's book with people he's never met. Amazing. A highschool friend at the other end of the country suggested we might collaborate on his book idea - something I hadn't considered before - but imagine writing a book with folks in three different countries? Total New Local in action!
I wasn't actually expecting there to be any new comments here... I just had a thought about Walter's discussion topic - impact of the new local on communities.
Politics came to mind.
There's an organization called MoveOn.org, whether you like it or not, it's had a major impact on politics in the U.S. There's been a lot of talk about the impact of blogs on journalism.
There are two communities to address. There are the "new local" communities that got started on the internet, the oldest of which can only be in their late teens (internet zero date according to some is 1996). And there are "old local" communities that got started at a geographical location on earth, usually quite a while ago, but not necessarily.
The "new local" communities are flexing their muscles. Expect them to have an even larger impact on the 2008 elections than they did on 2004. I don't know if you remember swiftboat.com, but it might be argued that this suspect website might have struck the deathblow to John Kerry's race. Increasingly, campaigns, including smaller community ones, will be fought on the internet with blogs playing a huge role.
As the "new local" communities get more organized and self-aware, they're going to change the landscape. Big time. And the changes might even look like a catastrophe if you just measure the depth, breadth, and speed of the changes. Tectonic shifts. These will have a major impact on the old local communities.
Watching some old movies, sometimes it might seem that people "out west" were isolated and alone, incredibly self-sufficient. But in truth, they were incredibly dependent on the world economy. News from the outside world was an important commodity. Traders coming through brought goods and services. They themselves all came from elsewhere. If you read about the Native Americans, trading was an integral part of their lives even before the arrival of the White Man.
The point is that all local communities, "new" or "old", are connected to the greater community. The new technologies speed up this connection. Perhaps the real "new local" is going to be planetary - the much talked about Global Village. But an amorphous homogenous global culture doesn't seem likely, we'll still have local communities - even if their "place" is only a website address. But what is the appropriate politics for virtual communities? What is the appropriate governance? How is this going to impact our politics? Will we be seeing something even more profound than the Magna Carta or Bill or Rights happening in our lifetimes?
Back from an extended absence - sorry to be awol for awhile. Two major initiatives underway requiring so MUCH time. My brain simply hasn't been up to the task of being able to provide logical and coherent comments. (As if it ever was :) Anyway, I will look forward to seeing your book Trevor. What is the subject matter?
Paul - the point you bring up about using the new local to improve the old local is compelling. I think that in the end that is what we should all strive for. It is the present, the real, the physical manifestation of our presence that is our day to day life. That is what the old local is to me. How can I meld the new and old to refine NOW.
Mark - you story about communicating with your distant family in 30 minutes hits close to home. My daughter and first child is leaving home for college next year and I can already tell you that my anxiety over the event is somewhat lessened by the fact that I know I will be able to communicate with her daily via email or VOIP if I want, not to mention the possibility of adding webcams on each end.
I am in agreement that the new local will speed the pace of change. Yet all these discrete channels of interests and thoughts also tend to create a larger single community as well. This does pose some inherent risks in addition to the benefits. Bad ideas and inaccurate information can spread rapidly and cause massive changes and results instantly - before they they can be dispelled. (Witness the infamous urban legends that continue to recycle themselves). I am also reminded of a plot angle in a science fiction classic now probably 25 years old called Ender's Game in which two genius level kids influenced global viewpoints by adopting pyseudonyms and posing as adults and posting on "the nets." On one hand the plot highlighted the ability of an idea to stand on its own merit yet on another level it is highly disturbing that two people could have such influence so rapidly. I remember thinking when I read it that the concept was far fetched. Today, I would say it is not that far a stretch.
So it is important to utilize the new local in the right way in order to impact the old local in the best way. There is some value in letting ideas and concepts simmer over time. One is less likely to make a poor decision based upon emotion or bad information. One of the reason the US has both a popluar vote and an electoral college is that our founding fathers felt that in order to preserve the structure of the constitution and framework of the government they had to protect again flash judgement or emotionally based action. Theoretically, the electoral college is supposed to be an "informed" electorate and carry more weight than the popular vote - who they preceived would vote for issues of the moment rather than considering the issues impact on the nation on a long term basis. Given that some of our native peoples in North America had procedures in place whereby they would not make major changes to the laws and traditions of the tribe until they had considered an issues impact on the next seven generations, this would seem to be a sound judgement.
As far as voting in in our new local that is a dicussion for another day. I had a friend, Tim Stryker, founder of the Major BBS by Galacticomm, who very much espoused e-voting. This dates me but it does remind me to mention that the internet was birthed way before 1996.
Good to be back. Thanks for everyone's patience with my absence!
Trevor - I have installed Skype so I will contact you soon. -Walter
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