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July 20, 2006
The Power of Conversation Redux
Posted by Paul B Hartzog
In September of 2005, I posted “The Power of Conversation” in which I suggested:
“The real value of communicative technologies like social software is that they re-enable and enhance our ability to use a time-tested means of information processing, i.e. the conversation, in new and interesting ways!”
Now, today I caught “The role of conversation in a changing society and public realm”:
Conversation has long been the cornerstone of our society. New technologies enable us to speak to people anytime, anywhere. However, there is growing concern – both in the UK and elsewhere - that we are talking less than we used to. This work suggests that this is a misconception and that the issue is actually much more complex.
(thx to this post over at Howard Rheingold’s Smart Mobs)
Robert Putnam’s book Bowling Alone catalyzed the debate about the decline of community. Putnam, like many others, suffered from ontological blinders. By defining community in a narrow way, he failed to see forms of community that didn’t fit his narrow definition. But:
The adherence to outdated ways of thinking about social involvement have intensified concern about our sense of community. The way that we engage with those around us has changed. We no longer necessarily connect with either conventional structures like community societies or even less formal associative fora, like markets. Community involvement remains of vital importance, but structures of engagement no longer reflect the ways in which people are comfortable in having their say.
This problem is also rampant in politics where scholars who focus on the primacy of nation-states ignore transnational social organization, and scholars who focus on the structures of formal government fail to notice the networks of informal governance that are emerging across the globe. The bottom line is that technology ushers in new forms of social organization that escape notice precisely because they are invisible to adherents of the old paradigm. By the time anyone notices the impending social transformation, it is too powerful to contain, and social transformation cascades across the landscape. Or so the theory goes.
So what about conversation? Well, I venture to suggest that it is through conversation, the connecting of people with other people, the exchange of ideas, the spread of information, debate, dissent, and empathy, that collective wisdom arises. Furthermore, given the resurgence of violent politics, the ambivalence in the face of environmental crises, and profit-driven enclosure movements like overly restrictive copyright law and the Net Neutrality concern, we could definitely benefit from new forms of social organization as carriers of collective wisdom.
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1. Bob Jacobson on July 21, 2006 10:43 PM writes...
Fellow Corante blogger Paul makes a heroic case for things getting better, not worse, in terms of social discourse. He worries that adherents to obsolete paradigms are blind to positive changes in the social environment. I suppose Paul means those changes brought about by online communications (which, after all, is this blog's theme).
But Paul runs the risk of falling prey to the Red Queen Syndrome, i.e., "Words mean what I want them to mean." Social communities of the conventional, face-to-face variety are collapsing? Let's call online social networks the same thing and thus, a suitable substitute. Nation-states and other formal governments are becoming impotent? Let's assume that informal networks are taking care of things.
But the evidence isn't there. For those who want to believe, a paradigm shift is needed for one to perceive the new world that's emerging. I get it. Having been online since 1975, I have a realityh, half of which is online, virtual. That doesn't mean the other half of my reality is bogus or obsolete. Keep in mind, for most people, the other, non-virtual part of their lives is more like 3/4ths or 4/5ths.
I'm all for being hopeful, but we who profess big changes have to remember that change sometimes is global but more often is local (even in virtual space) and particular. We who are fortunate to be on the leading edge of change have to remember: we ARE on the leading edge, or at least, an edge! There are a lot of reluctant, slow followers, just as there are a lot of overly enthusiastic true believers.
Permalink to Comment2. Paul B. Hartzog on July 22, 2006 8:35 AM writes...
Bob Jacobson makes some good points.
I do think that it is significant however that an entire generation of people ("geeks") who had rejected and retracted from the non-virtual have now re-invigorated the social by creating it online.
As for evidence of a paradigm shift, paradigms cannot possess evidence. A paradigm shift is an ontological difference, and an ontology determines what you see, in other words, what counts as evidence in the first place. In order for a paradigm shift to occur, belief has to come first.
Permalink to Comment3. adrian Chan on July 25, 2006 6:54 PM writes...
I think there's a difference between communication and conversation, and at the risk of splitting hairs, it an important one. More information doesnt make us better informed; more connections doesnt make use feel more connected. The proliferation of asynchyronous and non face-to-face communication is a powerful force indeed, a democratization of systems, knowledge, power, and social organization. But while reality and virtuality are both "real," they're not the same. I don't think that what's done in gaming online is *the same* as off (line)... Do you? Don't we have to account for the medium? It's a means of production. Surely informs and shapes our experiences as any medium does?
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