Social Networks
Entries related to social networks, group psychology, anthropology, and really any of the social sciences.
Blogging alone
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 11/25/2005 - 12:05In 2001, Robert Putnam published his book, Bowling Alone : The Collapse and Revival of American Community.
Amazon’s review says, “In a nutshell, he argued that civil society was breaking down as Americans became more disconnected from their families, neighbors, communities, and the republic itself. The organizations that gave life to democracy were fraying. Bowling became his driving metaphor. Years ago, he wrote, thousands of people belonged to bowling leagues. Today, however, they're more likely to bowl alone“.
Can blogging and other online communities be tools to help reconnect American’s with their family, friends, and neighbors? I think it can, and often point people to sites like Michele Agnew’s blog.
A New Content Supplier
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 11/05/2005 - 12:03(Originally published in Greater Democracy).
Back in August, I wrote about Political Network Topologies, drawing a distinction between two models of politics, one in terms of social networks and the other in terms of citizens as consumers. Jock added a comment pointing me to the work of Anna Nagurney from Umass on supernetworks.
I listened her keynote at MeshForum 2005 and started thinking in different ways about networks. Usually, when I think about networks, I think about nodes and links. However, she points out the importance of the flow on the network as well.
Yesterday, Grant McCracken wrote about brands as a new content provider. He focuses on the ‘flow’ aspects of social networks and how this flow is essential to sustaining social networks. He goes on to suggest that brands may be an important source of ‘flow’ for social networks, thus bringing together ideas of politics as a social network and politics as a group of citizens as consumers.
Second Life
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 10/22/2005 - 13:27Brett, a member of Colin McEnroe's class on blogging wrote this blog entry. About Second Life, he writes, "I think it contributes to people's lack of personal correspondence in the real world".
I wrote two comments to his blog entry, which I have combined below:
(Categories: )
Playing with Technology
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 10/20/2005 - 13:44So, today, I set up Flock on my laptop. I couldn’t set it up on my main PC, because my main PC is still running Windows NT 4.0 which Flock won’t run on. Yeah, someday, I’ll get around to an upgrade.
I created a post using flock. Works pretty much the same way that Flickr does. No biggie there. Then, I enabled it to communicate with del.icio.us for sharing bookmarks. That looks pretty cool. Perhaps I’ll play with that a little more.
It would be nice if it would also talk with Bloglines. I’ve been using Bloglines more than del.icio.us these days since Bloglines has a nice way of letting me know when entries have been updated that I don’t see in del.icio.us.
A Web 2.0 Bubble?
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 10/17/2005 - 17:53Recently, a top topic Technorati has been Web 2.0 after the conference in San Francisco. There have been lots of discussions about who is buying which blogging companies. Today, AJAX, which one blogger calls “the crown jewel in the current Web evolution that has been dubbed Web 2.0”
Over on another blog, Rich ponders if we are seeing the formation of a new internet bubble. Well, if Web 2.0 is the new internet, then it only makes sense that a new internet bubble may be emerging. Perhaps the first internet bubble was about shopping. The new one is about media.
