IN THE BUBBLE JOHN THACKARA - witz cultural

Connected Communities
Conviviality 131
A network is not, per se, a community. A community embodies trust and
social capital that develop through time as a result of embodied interaction
between people. The Internet complements communities—it does not
create them. Connections between people can be enabled by technology,
but trust is dependent on the passage of time and the contiguity of
bodies. As Pekka Himanen and his colleagues have written, ‘‘the tools and
governance principles of the open source software community, in some
modified form, could yield new approaches to community organization
and problem solving.’’ 55 To do this, we need supporting infrastructures
that enable dialogue, encounter, and community. The collaboration tools
and social software for these better-connected communities need to be
designed. So how do we design support networks as effective ways to enable
mutual support?
A number of researchers have been preoccupied with this question
for quite some time. Eve Mitleton-Kelly, for example, a professor at the
London School of Economics, creates connectivity netmaps of organizational
communications—e-mail, telephone, instant messaging, etc.—in
order to reflect real-world interactivity and coevolving patterns of connectivity
over time. 56 The aim is to reveal unexpected linkages and
connections—or gaps—within social networks. Another researcher, Valdis
Krebs, has developed social-analysis software that maps social networking
in academia and other domains. ‘‘Experts have long argued about the optimal
structure of a person’s professional network,’’ says Krebs. ‘‘Some say
that a dense, cohesive network brings more social capital, while others
argue that a sparse, radial network, one that provides opportunities for
innovation and entrepreneurial activity, equates to greater social capital.’’
Krebs has constructed a links map of the so-called Erdõs network (about
a celebrated mathematician by that name) that shows both patterns—a
densely connected core, along with loosely coupled radial branches reaching
out from the core. 57
These experiments in mapping social networks can be fascinating, but
the conclusion I draw is that you don’t design social networks as you would
a railway or cable network. Social networks generally start out small and
develop gradually. The modest design actions we might take to improve
the efficiency of information transfer within a network are to create hubs,