Communities on the Web

It is quite likely someone will have mentioned the online social network Facebook in some context to you, whether to wax lyrical or to warn you of its dangers.

Not to be outdone the Campaign Company now has a page or two on there. We are interested in exploring the development of these online social networks and I'm sure we will publish our views and conclusions here in due course. We are are also developing wiki systems to make this blog and website much more interactive. More on that in the future.

Its not just Facebook, where communities and social networks are developing. Second Life even has its own money, exchange rate and developing market economy. If you meet "Campaign4 Yue" on there, that is me, though I am still finding the processing power required to move around a bit daunting!

Some may think these communities are escapism or frivolous, but it can be argued that they add to the richness and complexity of social relations. There are also online communities that work together on cracking serious scientific number crunching issues through linking together down time on computers and using screen savers for practical purposes to build what is currently a 4 terraflop global supercomputer. If Facebook is the Face of 2007 then Grid Republic could be the story of 2008.

What all these sites illustrate is that people want to engage with each other in a range of social interactions - some fun, some serious. It sounds a bit like real life to me!

Many of these online communities reach out to groups that are sometimes difficult to engage with by traditional means such as young people.

Just as democracy is the "least worst system" for resolving differences in real life, then there will need to be similar systems of deliberation and choice online to resolve issues.

If we want to make Democracy work well we have to apply ourselves to all situations whether its a local community or an online community.

Comments

[michael jones]

Thank you for the great post and especially for the information about the Blog Communities. It will help me very much!

[charliemansell]

Thanks for the kind comments and reminding me what I posted.

I recommend Grid Republic as a very productive online community doing distributed computing and generating teraflops of computing power. I am currently part of the community helping to configure the magnets for the "Large Hadron Collider" atom smasher at CERN HQ on the Swiss/French border - a bit like Basel airport but without rather entertaining cross-border bar!! It goes online in May in search of the Higgs Boson ("The God Particle") and other exotic sub-atomic particles/waves, so the online work done now will contribute to serious scientific progress in future. You may even have contributed to some scientist getting their Nobel Prize in 10-15 years time!

If you are interested in the development of new online communities the Guardian had an interesting article on page 3 of its 24 December issue. The URL is:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/dec/24/facebook.socialnetworking