communities

Are Online “Communities” Inspiring Real World Connections?

This past weekend, I indulged in lattes and newspapers.  Everywhere I looked, alongside articles about Twitter and Facebook, there were stories about people craving connections with one another in the real world —  the rise of community gardens, secret yoga gatherings, communal screenings of the “Lost” finale.  In an interview with the Globe & Mail, Christopher Hawkins, founder of www.sharingbackyards.com said it best, ”people are starting to see it’s not a big deal to be connecting with strangers.”

Feels like a tipping point. But why now?  Are we just coming out of our cocoons realizing that it’s sort of a drag there’s no church on Sundays, regretting that we traded the pub on Thursday night for a brisk walk on the sea wall?

A few years ago, Patrick West wrote a fascinating book called, Conspicuous Compassion.   West theorized that our public displays of emotion (wearing ribbons, joining rallies, laying flowers to mark the death of a celebrity) are an expression of our desire to connect. “We desperately seek a common identity and new social bonds to replace those that have withered in the post-war era.”

I have to wonder if the Internet, that frontier land of random connection, has allowed us to test drive these bonds, permitting us to reach out in an environment where the risk of rejection is mitigated by scale and anonymity. Might the world wide web have readied us to reach out to our real world neighbours?  Wouldn’t that be rich?

So much of what is happening in the social media sector is cloud shoveling.  Self declared thought leaders. “Benevolent” geeks building “safe” neighbourhoods that compromise our security and disrespect our very identify.

Might the greatest output of all that computing power, plastic and fibre wind up being the imperative it is creates in us to venture next door and invite our neighbour over for a cup of tea?

- Moyra

Tags: communities, Social Media, social networking, trends