We’re too concerned with falling down and someone having an upperhand. Try it sometime – have a conversation and do use the word I or me and keep asking questions until the other person get’s the point and asks one back – it’s called a conversation and despite the awkwards, can be fun.

Serious not cynical
h

Input: Networking on the train and in the world

Though I would have had no hesitation in greeting and engaging your travel companion.

Your description makes him look interesting. I would want to find out if he is interesting. I’d be happy at taking a chance on discovering his story and having him share it.

Of course I would have been respectful and polite. If he didn’t want to visit that would have been honored by me.

Maybe this is because I was raised in Nebraska and bring my Midwestern assumptions with me? I tend to assume that contact is always possible and distance doesn’t matter.

Still it is intriguing to think that online social networking is working backward on our willingness to meet and engage others.

Thanks for stirring the pot with this post.

Keep creating,
Mike

“…just read on social capital on wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_capital

guess my thoughts on social capital are closely linked to “Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community” and to the ideal of the civil society:

“….However, a truer definition of civil society is different though not wholly distinct from the third sector.[original research?] Lyons goes some way to addressing this by introducing a somewhat Marxist[dubious – discuss] interpretation of civil society, where civil society is “the space for free association, where people could meet and form groups to pursue their enthusiasm, express their values and assist others”. This is a “vibrant space, full of argument and disputation about matters of greatest import to its citizens”, resembling the polis of Athens more than the organisations of the third sector. This also implies “elements of the enlightenment use of the term civil society” including decency, respect, good manners and kindness to fellow beings.”

it is interesting that in a globalized economy (=society) with all its fierce one-to-one competition and at the height of social individualization (bowling alone) web2.0 – in quite a ‘poetic’ way – brings social capital back into work.

this social capital is ‘fluid’ – (quote: “… this is a vibrant space…”) and it also brings the social glues that are so necessary to civil life back into place – (quote: “…decency, respect, good manners and kindness to fellow beings..”) – and this in a way via the PERMANENT PRESENCE OF THE UNKNOWN OTHER (the wide spaces of the web) THAT HOLDS AS A RESERVOIR FOR ENCOUNTERING THE SIMILAR IN THE DISSIMILAR. … lessons in love and decency.. so to say”

i also think that web2.0 changes the way we interact in the real world. and i also think it has a tremendous impact on our creation of self and identity. – i think i said that before in a comment here on your site.

but it is amazing how our perception of others in the real world changes. the others in a train – the strangers in a train – in the airport, on a street etc… are still mostly ‘the others’ – ‘the unknown others’. but in our perception the unknown that surrounds us changes more and more into a reservoir of potential ‘soul-mates’ (if one wants to use such a big word) – or at least into a reservoir to identify and discover mutuality.

let me just share some thoughts from a conversation i had with a friend on that topic:

“….my key assumption would be that people connect intuitively – based on the recognition of the other as a similar self (similar in interests, profile and most important of all in expression). – reading the similarities in ‘expression’ one has to transcendent the written words and one has to be able to look behind it…. in a way we all start reading what people write more like we look at art or like we read literature. we are looking for the personality of the author to rise from behind the surface. … and that is quite new and a little bit sensational in-fact.

i think we more and more take for granted that there are potential ‘soul mates’ out there. – and that also means that we more and more put a focus on similarities in our individual orientation than on dissimilarities.
meaning: in the world before web2.0 the otherness of the others was something that we encountered in our limited field of interaction on a daily basis. and we also sort of knew that people geographically and culturally more remote from us were even more different from ourselves. – they were the others and therefore not us. – as luhmann’s systems theory for example implies.
and so our interaction with the others (not our family, not our schoolfriends, not people being introduced to us) had probably been more careful, more intellect guided. – we KNEW they were different in the first place.

now there is something slightly changing here: – now we FEEL that the others – or at least those others we chose to communicate with, are potentially very much like us.

as a consequence our interaction with these others (that we identify as potentially being like us) gets more guided by instinct and emotions. – some others out there are like us. we – kind of – know that. – and with this our concept of self changes. – and – and this would from my perspective be important in the context of your master thesis – our way of interacting with the others changes:

a) we filter likeness (we do this intuitively and we transcendent the surface in order to read the personality)
b) the ones that we consider like us come into our set of potential communication partners – all the others disappear in the endless space of the web
c) with the ones that we consider being some what like us we interact freely and spontaneously with a high investment of up-front trust

and here now comes another interesting factor:
by doing so on a regular basis our world significantly changes for us. – our world gets less rational but more ‘mystical’.

what do i mean by ‘mystical’? – mystical insofar as fundamentally mystical concepts of ‘connectedness’ and ‘love’ (love in theodor adorno’s definition as ‘the ability to recognize the similar in the dissimilar’ tend to become cornerstones in our day -to-day lives and in our daily interactions. – our life – and with this in our whole culture – gets in significant parts a drift from the rational modern world of the 20th century to a slightly more ‘irrational’ and slightly more ‘mystical’ world of the early 21st century. …”

I was led to think of previous social networks (before the Web) where complete strangers could automatically assume familiarity until proven otherwise. One example (perhaps?) was the Roman Empire where citizens of Rome were citizens no matter where they were born, what language they spoke, what they did, or where they lived. Not everyone under Rome’s rule was a citizen, of course, but a freed slave who became a citizen could envisage even becoming Emperor, as one did.

A better example would be Rome’s imperial successor, the Catholic Church. A Catholic traveler could and still can normally find friendship and support immediately among Catholics in a foreign country. I have often thought that 20th-century professional associations, such as Rotary and Toastmaster Clubs, were attempts to replicate this global network of immediate friendship among traveling strangers.

The British newspaper, The Guardian, has been running a series by a jounalist traveling in Latin America staying with people she has met on social networking sites. The latest instalment is here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2008/jun/14/brazil.travelwebsites

Our use of the internet lets us transfer mening to the real world. Well we know how that works. In that way the internet and other stuff like books, film etc. serves as great ressources.

But in comes the social aspect (the percieved interaction with other “real people” and maybe also a good part of connotations derived from Facebooks use of the word “friend” as a marker). If our OWN participation in social internet groups like Facebook gives us a “new” way to give mening to how we look at other people in the “real world”, if Facebook and the like gives us ressources to look strangers as potential “friends” and friends of friends, now that’s a big deal. A really big deal.