My thought for the year: it’s called “culture” because it grows everywhere.
That is, when you establish the bare medium for social interaction – be it a weekly meeting space, a shared workplace kitchen, a mailing list, or an option to “friend” others online – the base medium exists for a social culture to emerge, evolve, self-enforce and self-define, in a very shirky way. You can affect the process in some ways, but once it truly picks up, it’s important to recognize that you are no longer in control. The culture is an autonomous organism.
This shouldn’t be too surprising, but sometimes I’m impressed (occaisioanlly: exasperated or awed) by how social patterns evolve, everywhere, again and again.
LiveJournal was sold to a new owner, SUP, a few months ago. My feelings about this are a lot like those of Danah Boyd (link) but I wanted to try sharing them in my own words. (As you can see, I’ve been in no rush to chip in my two cents.)
I’m involved in many social networks (both explicit social networking sites, and sites that have implicit social connectivity going on) and with these networks, I have varying degrees of engagement. However, my connection with LJ is an intimate one. Social networks can be “neat”, “useful”, “fun”, but LJ is one where it most feels like I “live” on the internet.
In terms of features, it has mature power-user capabilities that matter: decent interfaces, good aggregation, and reasonable and customizable privacy filters. (Why are privacy features so undervalued?).
Beyond that, I find that LJ has been good at creating a kind of “landscape” to the social content. Each user’s Friends page – the center of the average user’s experience – becomes its own kind of territory, customized to the reader’s own network of friends and interests. It’s an emergent property of the way that LJ is meant to be used: moving series of textual content, over time, over context, brought to you by people you probably know in some fashion.
I have noticed that there are many sites (such as Vox) that could do much of what LJ currently does, often with extra snazziness added on. Nonetheless, I’m willing to see how the new ownership will keep evolving the site – as they must! – to keep LiveJournal positively growing. I’m willing to find a new home online, but I do like the one i have.
Theory: as the internet and related technologies allow for increasingly rapid evolution/devolution of subcultures and memes, content that is reliant on context will tend to suffer. (If it requires time/clicks to figure out the context, it won’t spread as quickly)
However: content that is especially enhanced by a break with context – so, ironic internet humor – will grow uncontrollably.
I finally read Danah Boyd’s paper, Identity Production in a Networked Culture: Why Youth Heart MySpace. Definitely give it a read. The two points I found most interesting:
(1) MySpace is about cultural identity production. You tweak your profile to show off what your style/clique/affiliation is, just like uniform clothing within cliques.
(2) MySpace gives a social space without authority. Excerpt:
“Teens have increasingly less access to public space. Classic 1950s hang out locations like the roller rink and burger joint are disappearing while malls and 7/11s are banning teens unaccompanied by parents. [...] By going virtual, digital technologies allow youth to (re)create private and public youth space while physically in controlled spaces.”
The other day I saw my friend Nelson (founder of Free Culture) in Cambridge. There was Indian food, and also a discussion of this idea of his: “A user-oriented open source software bounties site”. We talked about even expanding it to non-software free culture. It would work like this:
Step 0: Dev gets an itch for some media. “Man, I wish someone would record that epic orchestral piece Zigeunerweisen so I could download it. And I really wish that it was in the Creative Commons, so that I could share it with my friends.”
Step 0.5: Dev realizes that anyone would any taste would have a similar desire. Clearly.
Step 1: Dev posts a reasonable “bounty” for his request. “$200 for a CC-licenses recording of this most awesome song.” He throws in $20 to start things off.
Step 3: Smart folk log onto the site and throw in their donations.
Step 4: $200 is reached, and given to a community orchestra in Tulsa, who have recorded a righteous version of the song. Score!
Actually, this isn’t just a scenario; this is how I’m feeling right now. Clearly, this would be a good thing for Free Culture.