Scoped Collaboration.

Jon Udell on scoped collaboration:

Back before there were blogs, my groupthink laboratory was the NNTP protocol, which I used at roughly four levels: workgroup (my new media development team at BYTE Magazine), department (the BYTE editorial team), company (all of BYTE), and world (BYTE's public newsgroups). I learned something then that was, and still is, quite difficult to describe -- but critically important. I call it the principle of scoped collaboration, and I illustrated it in a chapter of my book like so:

The crucial insight, for me, was that a new kind of skill is becoming relevant: the ability to make effective use of overlapping scopes. Here's how I put it then:

If I am seeking or sharing information, why do I need to be able to address a group of 3 (my team), or 300 (my company), or 300,000 (my company's customers), or 300 million (the Usenet)? At each level I encounter a group that is larger and more diffuse. Moving up the ladder I trade off tight affinity with the concerns of my department, or my company, for access to larger hive-minds. But there doesn't really have to be a tradeoff, because these realms aren't mutually exclusive. You can, and often should, operate at many levels. [Practical Internet Groupware]

Another great example of an emergent Ecosystem of Networks structure.  He goes on to describe how when someone makes use of different scopes they position themselves as routers.  This is similar to what some call community straddlers.  And how weblogs differ from other modes of communication in the ability to effectively share to a broader scope at less cost (time and spam).

[Ross Mayfield's Weblog]

Ross is on a roll. The idea that overlapping scopes is a prime part of social networks is a interesting insight.  5:53:18 PM    

Social Capital of Blogspace.

Perhaps we are in the Network Age [Ming], following modernism and post-modernism.  After obsessing about construction, then deconstruction, we now value the links between deconstructed bits.  When those links are between people, they can be valued as social capital.

Robert Putnam, in Bowling Alone, popularlized the role of social capital.  Francis Fukayama, in Trust, principally discusses the correlation between social capital and the prosperity of nations.  He defines social capital as the ease in which people in a culture can form new associations.

Network Layer	Unit Size	Distribution of Links	Social Capital	Weblog Mode
Political Network	1000s	Power Law/Scale-free	Sarnoff's Law (N)	Publishing
Social Network	150	Random/Bell Curve	Metcalfe's Law (N2)	Communication
Creative Network	12	Even/Flat	Reed's Law (2n)	Collaboration

As previously described in the Ecosystem of Networks, people use weblogs in different modes: Publishing, Communication and Collaboration.  By dramatically lowering the cost for these modes on the public internet -- they are rapidly increasing the value of social capital.  Each mode provides different valuation methods:

• Publishing: Sarnoff's law says the value of a network is proportionate to the number of subscribers.
• Communication: Metcalfe's law says the value of a network is proportionate to the number of links.
• Collaboration: Reed's Law says the value of a network is proportionate to the number of groups.

Now Sarnoff + Metcalfe + Reed does not equal a valuation methodology, but centering on the value of different kinds of relationships reveals where investment would provide greater return.  Enhancing communication and ties between collaborative groups enables exponential growth of social capital. 

The above image also recasts the Ecosystem of Networks with the individual as the center, as preferred by many...

From Zack Lynch's forthcoming book:

...Unlike many of his contemporaries, the insightful UC Berkeley sociologist Manuel Castells in his ambitious two thousand page trilogy, The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture [retitled the Rise of the Network Society] provided a comprehensive assessment of the impact of information technologies have on culture and global society at large. Castells? extensive analysis of how "our societies are increasingly structured around the bipolar opposition of the Net and the Self? will remain an important perspective for some time to come. Here, the ?Net? stands for the new organizational formations, social and cultural, based on the pervasive use of networked communication media...

Perhaps we are living in a Network Age, building a Network Society.  Perhaps Emergent Democracy is as significant as a Second Superpower.  But at the least, we are building new relationships-- a connectedness that we should value.

[Ross Mayfield's Weblog]

Excellent stuff here that I need to read and digest at my leisure.  5:48:58 PM    

Dan Gillmor, of the San Jose Mercury News, is writing a book on the intersection of journalism and weblogging, and wants your help.

[The Scobleizer Weblog]

This should be fun to watch and maybe participate in.  5:31:40 PM    

Extending the Patriot Act

5:20:20 PM    

Is scientific self-censorship an unnerving and hig .... Is scientific self-censorship an unnerving and high-risk response to terrorism? How about ordinary, involuntary censorship? John Steinbruner, an arms control expert at the University of Maryland, is making the rounds of biomedical conferences advocating that an international body decide what may and may not be investigated, which pathogens may be shipped and where, and which scientists and research projects will be licensed to proceed. "[T]he oversight system he envisions would be mandatory and it would operate before potentially dangerous life sciences experiments are conducted. Even if the line of inquiry wins approval, access to results could be limited to those whose motives had passed muster under the proposed framework he has developed." Steinbruner calls it "just an extension of the normal peer review process". [FOS News]

This sort of top down decision on what is permissible does not excite me, particularly since it also holds itself up for abuse. I just wrote over at Living Code about a group that is using an engineered form of a Clostridium bacteria to fight cancer. Similar sorts of approaches could be used to creat a form of Clostridium that could kill people. Who would or could decide? It would add a huge bureaucracy and not stop the bad guys. They will do the vicious work in secret, leaving the good guys with little ability to fight back. If it is leaky enough to allow the good guys to work on these things, then it will be too leaky. I just do not see how this can be made to work from the top down.  11:52:00 AM    

Santa Cruz Librarians Fight Patriot Act. BeSpacific Apr 7 2003 12:11PM ET [Moreover - moreover...]

Some very nice work arounds. Destroy any data before it gets incorporated into a government database. Expect this to be fixed in the next version of the Patriot Act. Maybe by making it a crime to do anything that might hamper the government from collecting ANY information it decides it wants.  11:42:26 AM    

My Writings At Living Code

• Cancer and Bacteria
• Human Cloning
• Melanoma
• Ebola and Apes
• Sheep without Hair
• Sudden Oak Death

11:39:14 AM    

Guardian Launches Science Page

10:53:04 AM