|
 |
Wednesday, April 10, 2002 |
Social capital, bonding, and bridging.
I attended a talk tonight by Robert Putnam, author of Bowling Alone, a study of the sharp decline of social capital over the last 30 years. The decline is measured as a loss of connectedness: people less willing to join organizations, to be civically involved, even to entertain friends at home.
When I read the book some months back, I wondered whether Putnam believes online community can help reverse the trend. Yes and no, it turns out. Although he doesn't seem deeply wired into online community, he made some interesting points about the Internet and social connectedness.
Face-to-face contact. Putnam's research shows that joining just one organization cuts your risk of dying, within the next year, by as much as quitting smoking. Social isolation is a huge health risk. Online community, for all its benefits and pleasures, is a poor substitute for face-to-face interaction. I greatly enjoy virtual society, but it doesn't do much for my blood chemistry. To what degree will telepresence make online social life feel more like mammalian social life? It will be fascinating to watch this unfold as storage, bandwidth, and CPU proceed on their current trajectories.
Bonding vs. bridging. The Internet clearly does support lots of group formation. To the extent that it enables like minds to gather, the kind of social capital thus created is what Putnam calls bonding social capital. This is useful and important, but can be insular. Cross-fertilization may not occur. Groups may turn inward, recycling memes that don't evolve. The countervailing influence is bridging social capital which connects dissimilar groups. This stuff is harder to create, but also more valuable.
These terms provide another way to understand the function of what I call human supernodes and what Malcolm Gladwell calls Connectors (people like Lois Weisberg). These people belong to many different groups, and they bridge among them. Tim O'Reilly is that kind of person. His conference in February brought together hackers, lawyers, politicians, biologists, and soldiers, and created lots of bridging social capital.
We have yet to see blogspace reach its full bridging potential. Radio Community Server will be part of the story. RSS is even more important, as a way of bridging among many kinds of tools and cultures.
I've watched the channelroll propagate to a number of Radio sites now. The subscription lists I see on other sites are, for the most part, very like mine. This tells me that there is more bonding than bridging going on at the moment. And it focuses my attention on the lists that are most different from mine. These, by definition, are bridges.
There are, of course, some promising bridging projects underway. At first, these mainly interconnect tech tribes. It gets really interesting when the bridges lead to other tribes -- of librarians, of academics, and I hope many others. [Jon's Radio]
7:57:39 PM 
|
|
Social capital, trust, and the purposes of online community.
Robert Putnam's data on social capital show that social connectedness in America was on the rise through most of the last century, until its precipitous decline beginning in the late 1960s. Why the decline? He blames television, urban redevelopment, single-parent households, two-career families, and other factors.
An equally interesting question: why the rise that preceded the decline? Putnam suggests that 100 years ago, there was a crisis of social connectedness like the one we are in now. Migration of agricultural workers to the industrial cities, and of European immigrants to America, badly disrupted social networks. In response, Americans invented social institutions -- bridge clubs, bowling leagues, men's and women's social clubs, the 4H (a government creation, in fact) -- and proceeded to join them at an increasing rate, until the trend suddenly reversed in the late 60s.
These once-popular social institutions were created, Putnam suggests, by people who sensed, or knew, that there was a critical deficiency of social capital. The institutions were designed to correct that deficiency.
If he's right, the flowering of online community that we see all around us may be part of a very large historical pattern. As a culture, we may be sensing a deficiency of social capital, and creating new institutions -- appropriate to our time and our technology -- to remedy the problem. Putnam's thesis may be read as a requirements specification for online communities.
A corollary to the sharp decline of social capital in our generation, by the way, is a sharp rise in the number of lawyers per capita. Fifty years ago, Americans thought that most people were trustworthy. Today most think the reverse. Lawyering flourishes, says Putnam, because it is the "production and sale of synthetic trust."
Interesting. For years I have interacted online with people I have never met face-to-face, and may never meet. Yet I trust them. [Jon's Radio]
7:28:38 PM
|
|
I had sushi with Adam Green tonight. We had a long talk about what the next big thing is going to be. What comes after the Web? The conclusion: PCs, Web Services, and lots of great apps. It's subversive. It turns the Internet into an operating system. It flys under the radar of the bigs (which means that there is plenty of room for independent developers to have fun and make money) and it has a low price of admission: $39.95. [John Robb's Radio Weblog]
11:04:28 AM
|
|
Yesterday, Ernie blogged:
"I'm sure an E-book would hold all of the information that my son and three of his colleagues are carting around, and do so in a searchable, and electronically highlightable (and bookmarkable) form. Plus, many E-Books have built in dictionaries so that if someone is reading and they don't know the definition of the word they can access it immediately. The cost of distributing the books would probably be so much lower that the student could buy all of the books and get the reader free. I mean this is a no-brainer. Is any school out there working on this? Why not?"
The answer to his question is yes, although my knowledge about the project is a year old now. AFAIK, the leading candidate in this arena is still the goReader. It's basically a tablet PC with the following features:
- Connect to the Internet wirelessly, via a LAN or Dial-in connection.1
- Enjoy full-page 800x600 Web browsing.
- Synchronize with Microsoft Outlook to download important emails and contact information.
- Download, revise and upload Office, PDF, HTML and many other documents with goReader's multiple format support.
- Draft Word, Excel and email documents easily via a virtual keyboard, USB keyboard or handwriting recognition.
- Jot notes on screen in your own handwriting with Ink Memo.
- goReader weighs only 2.4 pounds, yet is secured by a durable magnesium housing.
- Windows CE operating system provides users an intuitive, familiar interface.
- Memory is easily expandable using CompactFlash or PC Card options.
- SuperVGA 10.4" TFT touchscreen provides a bright, easy read.
- Instant-on, instant-off allows you to forget about long boot-up times.
- Device directly connects to several peripherals via a USB port, PCMCIA type II slot and microphone and headphone jacks.
- Optional Docking Station offers extended connectivity with 4 USB type A ports, 1 USB type B port, 2 PS/2 ports, DC-in and data synchronization.
- Listen to MP3 music files while traveling.
- Play Windows Media Player video files while passing time at the airport.
- Record important notes with the 18 bit analog digital stereo.
- Attach a video display and microphone to run presentations directly from your device.
I'd love to have one of these myself! I had heard that field tests were being run at Highland Park High School and the University of Chicago. You can read more about the Highland Park trial here:
That's about all I know about this particular ebook reader, but I know Tom is more familiar with them and I'm hoping he'll either leave a comment below or start his own blog and discuss it there. [The Shifted Librarian]
10:47:04 AM
|
|
Transfer Drawings from Paper to Handheld with InkLink.
 "Seiko Instruments will soon release the InkLink, which transfers handwritten notes or drawings from any pad of paper to a handheld. The InkLink Data Clip is attached to the top of a pad of paper and continuously monitors the position of the InkLink pen. As the users writes on the pad, the Data Clip communicates its exact position to the handheld, which creates a drawing mirroring what's on the paper. Priced at $100, the InkLink is available from Seiko's webstore now and from retail electronics stores in about two weeks.
The InkLink is an improvement over Seiko's SmartPad, which required the handheld to be in a special carrying case fitted out with a pad and an infrared port. The InkLink can be attached to any pad of paper up to legal size.
A wire leads from the Data Clip to an infrared transceiver, which can be clipped onto the infrared port of almost any handheld and even laptops with infrared support." [PalmInfoCenter, bOing bOing]
This sounds like the Mimio, which we have at SLS. We rarely use it because it's a pain to set up and it only stores what you write as an image rather than as text. If you can't search it, it's not as valuable. When they can add accurate OCR to these things, they'll become much more valuable. [The Shifted Librarian]
9:05:34 AM
|
|
Wired reports on a cool new technique to repair torn retinas using magnetized nanoparticles.
Batting those baby blues may soon carry an extra magnetic pull -– literally.
The Virginia Polytechnic Institute team believes its new but controversial technique to repair torn retinas could prevent blindness in thousands.
The procedure consists of injecting magnetized nanoparticles set in silicon directly into the affected eyeball.
Once the silicon is in place, the ophthalmologist will use external magnets to position the fluid to the exact location of the tear to seal off any holes in the retina.
8:45:43 AM
|
|
© Copyright 2002 Mark Oeltjenbruns.
|
|
|
