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 prosperty 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 porportionate to the number of subscribers.
• Communication: Metcalfe's law says the value of a network is porportionate to the number of nodes.
• Collaboration: Reed's Law says the value of a network is porportionate 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]
9:39:48 AM  #  

The Role of Blogs, continued.......In the last few .... The Role of Blogs, continued.......
In the last few weeks we already saw several contributions by Lilia, Denham and others, like myself, discussing whether blogs can actually serve as a place for knowledge sharing, dialogue (or deep dialogue, although I don't really know what that is supposed to mean).

Lilia points to, writes and comments on some new entries into the debate:
Blogs, dialogue and identity building
Blogs, dialogue and identity building (2)
I wonder why it's hard to believe that weblogs are good
Blogs, dialogue and identity building (3)

Denham and Lilia also provide a place to keep track of the conversation as a whole: Is Weblog a Hype?

I really like that Denham Grey has stirred up this conversation, but I don't yet really know what his concrete objections and reservations are. I get the feeling, and I hope Denham will tell me if this is not correct, that the basic point of critique is that weblogs don't serve just the one purpose of deep dialogue and that dialogue is not contained within that single space, and second that the medium is not automatically a place for dialogue, but has to be used as such first. In other words that the medium in itself is not a real catalyst for dialogue.

Both objections I can agree with. But so what? Do blogs need to be?
When I wrote about listening, and knowledgesharing as storytelling and listening, one of the comments I got was that blogs are, since they're published on the internet, per definition broadcasting media.

My reaction to that is, that, yes, some blogs are more the broadcasting type, but some are not, mine certainly isn't. The fact that I'm sitting down with friends in front of my fav pub on the market square for a beer, and have a conversation everyone could potentially listen in to, or take part in, does not make me the town crier. On the internet it's the same difference.

The number of potential audience is irrelevant, it's about the actual returning audience, in this blogs case around 20 people, not counting the passers by. (Ross Mayfield has written interestingly about audience size and blogs: Blogging Bubbles, Repealing the Power-Law, and especially Distribution of Choice).

It is with that core audience that dialogue ensues, or debate. When the audience increases to several hundred 'regulars' one tends to see the author taking a less active stance in taking part in discussing postings, except with the core-group bloggers that have been around for a longer time. That is the transition towards broadcasting. So, no blogs are not automatically fostering dialogue: people have to make an effort, as always. You have to have a group of people around you, not too large, not too small, to have a dialogue. Or different groups for different topics.

Blogging functions both as a place to start building those needed trusting relations, and a place to have the dialogue, and write down the different inputs in to it. That does not take place automatically, you have to be committed, just as in any other setting for dialogue to ensue. The art of dialogue is therefore probably just as widespread here, as in other areas of life, with one advantage: it is easier to spot the willig amongst bloggers, than picking them from a crowd. I see no reason therefore to denounce blogs as unfit for dialogue.

The other assumption, that blogging does not have dialogue as its single purpose, nor that it is the single space in which dialogue takes place, I think isn't of real importance either in my opinion. The point is that I have dialogues with people. One on one mostly, and sometimes it's a multilogue, when there are more people involved. People. Now in my contacts with people I employ whatever means of communication is the most fitting at a given time. Can be face-to-face in different settings, can be e-mail, can be phone, and of course can be blogging. My blog often serves as a starting point, where I write something that has triggered my interests, follow ups by others in their blogs or in my comments-section then come into view. And from that it's a mix of the things I mentioned. I already know that I will probably be talking about dialogue with Lilia and Sebastien when I meet them in Vienna next month, or that I might have a conversation with my girlfriend about it tonight, and insert the results here. It's the conversational cloud I referred to in an earlier posting.

Dialogues in my view will never be confined to one single space, or medium. Even if you put a group in a room for a day to have a dialogue on a certain issue, it will continue and evolve beyond those walls, first during breaks, and then afterwards. To me it seems that the wish to have it all in one place reflects a deeplying command and control issue. Thing is, I'm utterly fine with chaos, as long as I am in command and control of just one thing: me.

And of course blogs do not have being a platform for dialogue as a single purpose. It is about maintaining a thought-record, it is about annotated bookmarks, it is about having a low threshold place to take down notes from wherever I am, and it's about added bonusses of doing that publicly: new social contacts and the resulting trusting relationships from them, some vanity when people say you posted great things, and dialogue. It's the basics that started me going in blogging, it's the bonusses that keep me doing it for you to see. If not for the bonusses I would have returned to the stacks of legal pads that served me well for almost 15 yrs.

[Ton's Interdependent thoughts]

9:37:51 AM  #