It may be a coincidence and it certainly has
something to do with the people I hang out with, but
in the past couple of months I've had the same basic
conversation - on and off the Web - with
increasing frequency. We begin by talking about some
of the cool things about the Web, and then about the
fact that we're able to send email to anyone. Then
we give some examples of people we never thought
we'd be talking with who answered our message -
the person behind a Web site we admire, the author
of an article we liked. Our personal web of
acquaintances and friends has been extended by one,
with exponential results. In this conversation's
final stage, we talk in excited bursts about how our
lives have become more exciting, more stimulating,
more fulfilling because of this staccato web of
interchanges. There is genuine awe in our voices. We
are amazed by our ability to connect. Something is
in the air. A trend?
We are making new friends, but they're not quite
friends. Not only don't we have the word for them,
we don't know whether these exchanges are
promiscuous, one-night stands or whether we're
building a new type of persistent social
organization. In the real world, the little
interchange on some topic of the moment with someone
you've never met - the person sitting next to you
on the airplane, perhaps - would vanish like
yesterday's breakfast, leaving behind nothing but a
business card surreptitiously crumpled and left in
the seat pocket.
But in a world of digital
communication and ever-cheaper hard drives, nothing
vanishes. I'm carrying documents on my C drive from
10 years ago, and since every computer upgrade
brings more disk storage than before, there's never
an impulse to shed myself of them. So, the
communications with a stranger years ago stays with
me. Will these connections pop back up in a year,
five years, ten years? What is the persistence of
these intermittent friendships? Lifelong? Ask me at
the end of my life and I'll let you know.
We are, I believe, at an "inflection point." We
thought we were answering email but we were instead
building a world. We are starting to see the
constellations in the flashing of the fireflies.
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The Author
David Weinberger writes JOHO and is one of the Ringleaders of cluetrain.com,
a manifesto of web ethics. He also provides strategic marketing
consulting to high-tech companies, writes for several magazines
(including Wired)
and is a commentator on NPR's "All Things Considered."
He was, as VP of Strategic Marketing, one of the shapers of Open
Text's intranet strategy. David sits on several conference boards
and is a member of AIIM's Emerging Technology Advisory Group. Reach
him at self@evident.com
.
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