Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Re: vision: purposeful online community for all human beings...

Author:Russell Lipton
Posted:7/9/2000; 10:31:32 AM
Topic:vision: purposeful online community for all human beings...
Msg #:18410 (In response to 18400)
Prev/Next:18409 / 18411

IMHO, when you start "listing" people formally, "politics" inevitably enter the fray (the wrong-side of politics: cliques, power groups et al).

That is entirely other than informal hotlisting and cross-linking (a good thing, to say the least), but isn't that already happening everywhere on the Web?

I'm not ranting but asking -

How purposeful can community be before it subverts its own purpose?

(Related questions: who gets to be the gatekeeper and why? If the gatekeepers are the "group", do group "ratings" generate anything better in the long run than the least-common-denominator stuff that already poisons our culture?)

There is an inherent degree of serendipity in Web-learning that routes around this kind of thing.

Put another way, the "noise" (purposeless-ness) that comes along for the ride is part of the dynamic. Can you have purpose without the noise as well? One person's grasp of "purpose" often looks like a waste of mindshare to someone else.

Serendipity is something more than "sheer luck" but something less than planned organization. I question that you ran into Greenspun, Winer et al through dumb luck. You were "routed to them" by a series of learning experiences on the Web. This doesn't make the clumsiness of the Web something mystical, to be sure, but maybe it isn't quite as clumsy as we imagine?

aka HeadDuffer
duffer.editthispage.com

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