So there I am travelling on the London Underground between Kings Cross and Victoria. I’m looking round me at the range of faces, the cultures, the advertising and the general speed of life and it suddenly occurs to me there are striking parallels between this and the world wide web.
Of course, the Web is a superhighway for information, for ideas, for data and communities. This same web is becoming a place of sharing of participation and collaboration through things like aggregation sites, social networking sites, wikis, podcasting and videocasting and of course blogging. And then I found myself wondering: Are there any sharing and co-operation parallels with this short journey of six stops?
Well, I looked around and yes, contrary to the common stereotype, I did see the occasional person smiling (usually an elderly person), or there was one young man who stood up to give his seat to an Indian woman. So I did see little glimpses that people were participating in eachother’s lives.
It’s common knowledge today that there’s a tendency towards social aggregation. You only have to look at the success of social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace and Bebo, or reputation aggregators like Digg or Delicious, or blog sites like Technorati, and many, many others, to see this phenomenon. People from all over the world are definitely are sharing, participating and collaborating.
And consider the benefits that all this brings. People are brought together, they’re communicating, they’re sharing stories and experiences and they’re learning from eachother. All this makes them feel part of a community – and we all want to experience that.
Which brings me back full circle to the journey I was making on the London Underground Victoria Line: All these benefits are being conferred on virtual communities around the world, but what aboutr the real life communities we actually live in – the villages, towns and cities? Most of us would benefit from a little more of this kind of activity in our real lives. Yet increasingly we know less about the people around us, our neighbours and people who live in the same street or building.
So, is there an inverse relationship between the popularity of the web and the isolation in modern living? And if there is, then what lessons can we learn from the Web to help us reverse this situation? Whatever the answer is, it’s all to do with sharing and participation.
