There is an interesting discussion emerging as several bloggers ask themselves if they can maintain their current approach to blogging. Stuart Henshall is central to this debate. It has been picked up by Johnnie Moore By Dina and by Jon Husband. Many old hands are winding down their blogs or contributing to this debate in their own way. Some thing is going on this year end in the 'shere.
The underlying sense that I get is that many are getting tired of what appears to be merely swapping ideas and are seeking some way of having more of an impact. Moving maybe from the talk to the walk?
As I showered this morning, a few idea of my own bubbled up.
1. A Product of the 'sphere for me has been a philososphy of disintermediating bureaucracies by direct links between individuals and communities - While many blog to vent, the group that I have gravitated to has used the 'sphere to define a philosophy and a set of supporting tools.
Over the last 2 years, I have narrowed down my exposure to the 'sphere to those that have been struggling to obtain a clearer picture of a world where the community serves itself is the central idea. The experience feels like a "reformation", hence my own link to Luther who had to break from a mediated relationship to God to a direct link. This new philosophy has a central tenet: the desire to link people and communities together directly rather than mediate them via a government, a school, a business whose serve themselves and not the community. The emerging idea is that social software in one form or another can enable these direct links.
The "word" is becoming flesh.
So, we now see in Asia, after the Tsunamis, a new face of social software. We see social software in action. The Iraq war saw its power as a media enhancment, now we see its active power. It is revealed as a mechanism to comprehend complexity and to enable help, aid and suport to flow bottom up and directly. As many of you know, I myself have been a beneficiary of this new mechanism. If governments had tapped into the 'shere earlier, they would have been able to accelerate their response and made it more effective. They still might learn to do this.
Aid will be transformed. Imagine the difference when the Tamil community in Canada can be linked directly into what is going on in the villages at home?
I can see how Skype could be used and how blogging and Wikis will make a huge impact on the effectiveness of aid - shifting it from the guilt of the rich to a direct helping hand from one community to another. I feel that this crisis is a turning point in the evolution of social software. The power of the direct linkage is being revealed. The frailty of the mediated & centrally controled approach is being exposed.
So the real news is not about the promince of the A list but the power of the tools to act effectively in a complex world.
2. Blogging also created the Early Adopter communities who will now take action to improve their communities. - I know and have come to love a group of people that I have never met. We know each other through this exchange of ideas and by the revelation of more than ideas. What blogging does best is to reveal the character of the blogger. So we get to know the person not just the persona.
The result is that we not only have developed this new philosophy but also a supporting tool set. Now with the ideas and the tools ready, we now want to act with each other. Trust has enabled us to work more quickly than in any other form of organization. Speed and comprehension are the requirements for effectiveness in complex situations. Traditional organizations can do neither.
Whether the task is aid or business, social software used well, can create meaning in our complex world. The traditional top down and centrally controlled approach is blind and ineffective in our complex world. It is clear to me now that in the next 5 years our institutions will evolve to use this philosophy and tool set or die
The proof will be in the actions of this small group of pioneers. Globally, Dina and a few friends can set up and operate a huge enterprise in a few days. Their actions will change aid forever. All of us can act like this now. Locally, on PEI, our local circles of bloggers is quickly forming into work groups where we are working on a number of intiatives, in eductaion, health, business, food and energy, to improve our community and to make a living. We will even have a "blog office/club set up in a few weeks where we can hang out and work in person as well as online.
Other groups are forming like matter in space formed planets. Our Sun? The new philosophy.
So I do not see time this as the end of blogging. I see this moment as a stage of growth of a new social system.
My metaphor the founding of the solar system. A lot of matter, bloggers, gradually formed into planetary masses. Each mass is a bit different from the others. They have difrent but interlocking interest in issues or tools. Some promote VOIP or Wikis, other eductaion or energy and so on. Some are like Earth, other gas giants like Jupiter. But all the planets make up a complete system. They all effect each other. We all circle a powerful gravitational force, the idea of a culture based not on a machine but on natural organization. We all share a belief that social software in some form or another will be the vector of transformation.
So happy to new year to all of us. How wonderful, that at this time of the winter solstice, the time of renewal, that we attend the birth of a new way of being for humanity - for that is how big I feel this is. In the next few years, the community world will prove by its acts that it can offer mankind and all life a better way.
