The Web's "Message in a Bottle"

Back in 1997 I read Robert Putnam's classic "Bowling Alone" for the first time. In his original thesis, Putnam argues that society has frayed, with people going through the motions of sociability...without actually socializing:

Putnam warns that our stock of social capital - the very fabric of our connections with each other, has plummeted, impoverishing our lives and communities. [He] draws on evidence including nearly 500,000 interviews over the last quarter century to show that we sign fewer petitions, belong to fewer organizations that meet, know our neighbors less, meet with friends less frequently, and even socialize with our families less often. We're even bowling alone. More Americans are bowling than ever before, but they are not bowling in leagues.

Perhaps the Web can help.

All it takes is one look at the blogging phenomenon to see that something is going on. It's not strange that an (apparently) opinionated loudmouth like myself blogs. It is strange to see normally shy or reserved people blogging, Twittering, Facebooking, etc., and I follow a wide range of people that fit this description.

This is one of the most intriguing things about the Web today. It is enabling speech that would normally be muted at best, nonexistent at worst.

Perhaps it's our way of sending a collective "message in a bottle," reminding the world that we're here and that, despite our individual shyness, we want to be heard and connect with others.

For example, my natural disposition is to expect that people have much better things to do than to hang out and/or talk with me, and hence to spend more time than I'd prefer alone. Through Twitter, however, I've come to know friends like @ZUrlocker, @p1lonn, and even my neighbor @bryce much better, and have grown more confident that they actually want to talk to me offline, because of our conversations online. (Guys, don't burst this bubble! :-)

In this way, Facebook and its ilk may actually help us to "bowl together," rather than alone.

It's not about the sheer number of "friends" that one can accumulate online, but rather the basic communication that increasingly takes place online, rather than offline, that makes the Web a unifying force, helping us to find just a few of the "hundred billion castaways looking for a home."

[SmpCtryPhys]

I got to see this in reality as an officer of a professional society with steadily declining membership. The root causes included members not having the slack time to come to meetings, and employers not wanting to support professional organizations. Putnam's work came very close to hitting the nail but did little to offer solutions.

Social electronic networking has demonstrated some success in mobilizing collective effort for social causes, the most notable perhaps being the Anonymous campaign against the "church" of scientology and Barak Obama's campaign. What it has not demonstrated, so far as I am aware, is any result beyond the fuzzy and impulsive (in the temporal, not emotional sense). Psychologists have offered that this may be because of the net's inability to adequate permit conversations involving hand talking and maths. (This is closely related to the problem of developing a note-taking client worth its salt in the sciences and engineering.)

Regardless, social electronic networking is at least a partial counter to the collapse of other-than-profit organizations and is thus worthy. But we need to maintain our efforts to find ways of expanding the scope beyond the current. Wii notwithstanding, it is hard to bowl physically on the net.

[russ danner]

I generally find myself wanting my cake and to eat it too. One doesn't get that outcome often but we can learn to balance and manage which is most important at any given time. I am a huge fan of the online capabilities. I live by skype and blogs like this one are very important to me but I firmly believe there is no substitute for the real thing.

When it comes to conversational / discussion type needs, It's my hope that the technology will catch up and rather the skype (which has replaced the letter and then the phone) with a friend or coworker we can just meet with them face to face. Nothing is better than sitting down with someone - human to human communication is so rich with information in body language and space that no video or the like could compensate fully.

Blogs and other written format of-course go beyond immediate social benefit because they grow the archive of recorded human thinking and reach many more people than one can visit in a single instant. This is vital for obvious reasons.

I have always found radioheads creep song to be revealing. "I want you to notice when I am not around." It sounds depraved but I think it looks human nature squarely in the eyes.

Traditional publishing actually goes against human nature in a lot of ways. People are often obsessed with themselves as Dale Carnegie points outs out in his celebrated writings. What people want is an ear to be heard by. The social revolution on the web is evidence that this is so.

I am think business and society are catching on to it. Publishing organizations should not fight this development but meet and extend it. Bring your customers in and let them be genuinely heard. I guess that sounds a lot like open source business models as well.

You may be reading this and thinking ha.. that guy is going on and on... must want to be heard. Exactly -- caught in the act me thinks.