A Sustainable Train of Thought

Via the Citizen Agency Blog (Choice words from Stewart Butterfield) I found the following quote from an interview by CNN of Stewart Butterfield, one of the founders of Flickr:

There was a lot of dialogue between the people who were developing Flickr and their users to get feedback on how they wanted Flickr to develop. That interaction made the initial community very strong and then that seed was there for new people who joined to make the community experience strong for them too. [ emphasis mine ]

Think of the field as the internet and the farmers as Flickr (or any other Web 2.0 social-networking AdSense collecting site)...they can plow all they want, but without some kind of participation on the part of the early adopters (the seed), there would be no crops to harvest.

OK, so that was a horrible analogy.

Success is not an either/or proposition. Success is the result of both parties working together. It’s co-creation, it’s co-dependency. And at some point maybe one party needs to move on. I understand that, and I’m not blogging on and on about this simply to provoke my RSI.

Yes, I see a lot of whining. But underneath that whining I see some troubling aspects which I personally cannot dismiss as simply…well, whining.

ArsTechnica comments (Flickr’s shift to Yahoo ID requirement sparks (virtual) rioting) on the need to recognize the effort and contributions that early adopters make in support of fledgling social networking sites.

Those who run online (and offline) communities know that you can’t please everybody, and that old-school members are the most demanding and change-resistant. But when it comes to major community status markers you have to bend over backwards to accommodate the members who really value this sort of thing. In Flickr’s case, some kind of differentiating marker for legacy members would be nice, like a badge or a title, or some other visible signifier of the major investment that these senior users have made in the community.

Seniority perks and visible signifiers of in-group status are “Anthropology 101,” and no amount of Web 2.0 pixie dust can change that basic fact of human nature. Community sites that forget this in the midst of changes and genuine improvements do irreparable damage to the very social networks that they’re striving to build.

To be clear, I’m not questioning the business case for the Flickr and Yahoo merger, nor am I questioning the supposed benefits which await newly anointed Yahoo email address owners in the form of single-sign-on to all of Yahoo’s properties (or most of them, anyway).

Rather, as I’ve said before, I’m trying to point out that in the rush to make the business case I think people are overlooking some basic human needs, which the ArsTechnica article begins to highlight. Furthermore, in projecting this kind of reaction into the future, I feel that unless people pay attention to the underlying causes behind this reaction, rather than the reaction in and of itself (which could be passed off as whining or whatnot), this whole notion of a participatory internet may just hit a few roadblocks.

Just think about it. Without the uber-geeks falling all over themselves to make Flickr what it is today (a property of almighty Yahoo), would your (insert stereotypically computer-illiterate demographic here) be posting photos on Flickr? Do not vex/anger/enrage/put out/incense/annoy the uber-geeks.

Anyways, as one of the ArsTechnica members (Traddy) succinctly points out:

You could argue that the reason the site was valuable to be bought out is because of their [the Old Skool-ers] work; since the site is all about “community”.

Well put.

There are a couple of other interesting posts lying around the interwebs:

Slashdot
The Zooomr CEO

Oh, and if you’re wondering what “kthxbai” means, here’s your answer

If you’ve used Flickr for a while, you’ve known about their acquisition by Yahoo and the subsequent inexorable march towards using Yahoo login names instead of the old Flickr login names. Well, the date has finally been set (March 15) and predictably there is a huge uproar in the Flickr message boards.

To their credit, Flickr seems to be managing this furor the best way they can, by being available for comment and kvetching in the message boards. And, really, there’s not much more they can do.

However, I can’t help but feel a twinge of discomfort at what’s happening, mainly because it shows the dark underbelly of social networking sites.

To wit: A group of people have an idea and put together some software that lets a bunch of other people engage in so-called social networking. Those early adopters are just as crucial to the success of the social network as the people who man the infrastructure and prune the message boards, etc. The difference is that the early adopters are unpaid for their time and efforts, while the infrastructure d00ds eventually/hopefully make oodles of money.

We’ve seen this happen before, just recently, with YouTube. The people who created this system weren’t the ones who put the effort into the videos which actually drew the visitors which…well, eventually attracted Google. Yet of the obscene amount of money that the company received, how much went back to the people who, when you really think about it, made it happen? It’s a bit of a chicken and egg situation, innit?

There is a co-dependency between the companies that develop social networks and the people who populate them, yet the systems currently in place serve to unfairly distribute the rewards of the service: 100% vs. 0%. Is this just how it is, or can something be done to make it more equitable? Because as it stands right now, YouTube and Flickr and all these other sites are effectively telling me that my time is worthless to them. And forgive me if I don’t agree with that perspective.

Getting back to Flickr, my fear is that as these kinds of mergers continue across the Web 2.0 universe, and as early adopters begin to feel more and more disenfranchised (or burned or perhaps even pwned), their enthusiasm for this exploitative environment will wane. What will replace it remains to be seen, but I can’t help to think it will involve shares of some kind, or some semblance of ownership or investment.

Now, this is not to say that early adopters know what’s right for a company, or that they should be involved in the day-to-day management of the company’s affairs. But I do believe it’s important to show respect, because they are as much a reason for where some of the companies are today as the people who put together the business. Whether that respect is acknowledged through discounts on premium services offered by the company, or manifested in some other way, such as recognition, I think there are means to reward the risk, time, and effort assumed by early adopters.

I would venture that so-called “old skool” members of Flickr prize their old-skool status, which is in its way a reward for their time and effort spent during the early days of Flickr. In that context, an outcry about changing login procedures is as much one of principle as it is identity and social standing, even if it’s a matter of personal pride (“I was one of the first!”). It remains to be seen whether Flickr will differentiate between former “old skool” Flickr members and newer members under the Yahoo system.

All I can think about right now is the next time one of these disenchanted, former-old-skool-Flickr users stumbles upon a new social networking site, and I wonder whether they will harbor any reservations about pouring their energy into yet another enterprise which, in the end, will not be theirs.

The bigger question, of course, is: will this sort of event, relived time and again over the course of many social networking mergers, lead to a chilling effect?

Pseudo live-blogging of a presentation by Maurice Cox at the GSD.

You can complain about the building codes, or you can get involved and change them…

Premise: there are some urgent matters, and some issues which can be weeded out which are not urgent. What you do has incredible relevancy when applied to matters which are truly urgent.

Two cases: one where you have the authority to make changes, and one where you’re leading, but nobody has given you the authority.

Maurice Cox grew up in Brooklyn, saw the decline and disinvestment within the community as it turned into a low-income neighborhood, and this influenced him to explore what influenced these changes and he as an architect could do to reverse this trend.

Thomas Jefferson equated design with happiness.

How to develop an architecture of trust when the public understands the implications of the tools architecture uses—typically planning and architecture are instruments of power. (discussed while showing how the downtown of Charlottesville, VA was razed and rebuilt with the “downtown of business” in mind.)

Using design for its transformative power. Thinking about the risks involved (political and otherwise) related to change.

Charlottesville: why grab adjoining tax base when you can create your own. Look at the entire city as an organism, a whole. Finding a way to strategically increase density.

Design thinking is applicable to problems which may seem political or social.

After defeating plans for a maximum security prison near their town, the community came together and leveraged their capacity for action and design to redevelop and rebuild their own community.

The development process of six years was one of matching their values to reality. Within the community, learning the tools and developing the capacity for transformation—there must be a sense of urgency behind it.

Richmond, VA – a ten-year process of change, zero-displacement, mixed incomes. Involves over 15 different stakeholders.

New Orleans, LA – How to respond to the grass-roots, citizens desire to rebuild.

The Global Green Competition – rebuilding with a focus on green, sustainable designs. How to integrate services (childcare), hydroponics on the roof, and solar panels and louvers.

Moss Point – reached out to Maurice Cox to learn more about the redevelopment process. Engaging in a door-to-door survey to understand the concern of the community prior to resolving problems and designing.

Biloxi, Mississippi – FEMA’s new Flood Elevations and its impact on architecture. (Structures must be 12 feet above flood level—leads to houses on stilts with many stairs.) Design constraints…so how do you challenge those constraints? Through a design fair (sponsored by Architecture for Humanity), architecture models presented to the community and engaged in a dialog with the designers. They began to express preferences and make choices.

(Unfortunately, several slides were missing from his presentation due to some problems with Powerpoint)

QA Session: need to pace the changes at a rate people can absorb them.

Visual communication skills are the most effective tools in the process.

One of the most amazing things I’ve encountered in recent days (if not months—this thing is really amazing!) was presented briefly at the Situated Technologies symposium I recently attended.

Waaaaay back in 1980 (!), a project called Hole in Space linked New York city to LA via a satellite video conference setup. Life-sized television images connected Lincoln Center in New York to a department store window in Century City, Los Angeles, California. Passersby could view, listen to, and speak with one another in real time through the setup, which was presented without any indication of who was responsible for it.

Amazingly, even though there was absolutely no promotion of the project, the crowds grew so large by the third day (simply through word-of-mouth, later reported on television) that it had to be shut down. Random people chatted with one another, family members reconnected—the fact that people had to travel to the installations was not an obstacle.

It blows my mind that in an age of Skype we don’t have this today. Amazingly, a woman at the time (1980, remember) was quoted as saying “Why didn’t we have this 20 years ago?”

I wrote a little more for the previous post which I ended up cutting, but the general point of the excised text was that the internet currently tends to act like a vast echo chamber, not only in terms of the views and opinions expressed, but also to whom they are expressed. That is to say, those who make up the online communities: people with access to a computer, internet access, read/write english (typically). It’s not like I can contact a refugee from Darfur, although I wonder what would happen if I could.

One phenomenon during the Isreal-Lebanon war just recently was the ability of citizens on both sides to talk, argue, and debate with each other via the internet. Their governments weren’t their mouthpieces: they themselves were. And what it came down to was that people on both sides had the opportunity to realize they were all human beings.

And it occurs to me that Hole in Space provides the same ability for individuals to converse as blogs ostensibly do: direct communication without a filter. War may be seen as an abrogation of direct communication between individuals in favor of communication (base though it may be) via figureheads and organizations. Television could be seen as the same: our news is filtered through CNN, whether by reporters or by news anchors. I don’t think it’s conspiratorial to think that the reason something like Hole in Space is exceptional rather than the norm is because these organizations don’t want us to communicate directly. Livelihoods are at stake in the case of television anchors; control in the case of governments.

Just imagine for a moment what the implications would be should another Hole in Space be set up between downtown Baghdad, Iraq and Main Street in Kansas City, Kansas.

I just attended a conference in New York City where it became immediately apparent to me that I didn’t fit in. Not that it’s a bad thing or a good thing; I simply realized that my priorities and focus over the years have changed significantly. While I enjoy a stimulating conversation as much as the next person, I’ve also developed a point of view which now includes Charles Eames’ observation that “Design is a plan for action.” And I must admit, I didn’t see much in the way of action at this conference. A lot of talk about concepts and theories and definitions, but very little in the way of concrete contributions to a cause.

Maybe I’m biased because my entire thesis year was spent looking for ways to make concrete contributions to a cause. But my observation from this weekend’s events is that a common cause might prove useful in harnessing all of this intellect and creative energy and focusing it towards real change.

Perhaps a step back is required to explain my position. In my first thesis presentation (way back in 2005) I proposed that the challanges posed by the climate crisis hold the potential to unify us towards a common goal, just as the Apollo missions captured the imagination, attention, and enthusiasm of the American people forty years ago. We have an opportunity to define real goals, produce real results, and instill real change. And this opportunity is nothing less than an opportunity to bring meaning to many peoples’ lives.

Now before the two people who read my blog get all upset, I use “meaning” as a framing device for actions and decisions. So just as a larger goal of buying a house would probably frame the choice of whether or not to max out your credit card, the climate crisis (and the other attendant ills that humanity faces as Jared Diamond so comprehensively presents in Collapse) provides a framing device for decisions and actions by both society and individuals.

So let’s talk about something controversial. I think most of the so-called “social networking” stuff out there is suspect. Sure, it’s fine if you want a diversion, it’s fine if you want to make money selling Google adwords, it’s fine as a commercial enterprise. But what has “social networking” really accomplished for society? What is its lasting contribution? How has it helped humanity to take a step forward?

I’m not saying that “social networking” is useless. Rather, I’m saying perhaps the energy behind its current application is misapplied. Look, we have more computing power available to us through the personal computer and the Internet than at any other time in the known history of man, and the best we can do is MySpace?

As I’ve said many times before, we face a multitude of very real problems and we have a very real opportunity to instigate change, to gather and focus human enterprise and enthusiasm towards a compelling, worthwhile, and meaningful goal.

Read the following passage from this Salon.com article, Calculating the global warming catastrophe, and tell me that current “social networking” sites are addressing these very real issues of community…what I would term social sustainability.

The technology we need most badly is the technology of community—the knowledge about how to cooperate to get things done. Our sense of community is in disrepair at least in part because the prosperity that flowed from cheap fossil fuel has allowed us all to become extremely individualized, even hyperindividualized, in ways that, as we only now begin to understand, represent a truly Faustian bargain. We Americans haven’t needed our neighbors for anything important, and hence neighborliness—local solidarity—has disappeared. Our problem now is that there is no way forward, at least if we’re serious about preventing the worst ecological nightmares, that doesn’t involve working together politically to make changes deep enough and rapid enough to matter. A carbon tax would be a very good place to start.

While this passage makes the point that our lack of community has made it difficult to pursue change politically, I think the more important point is the lack of community, period.

Think about that for a moment.

In a time when, theoretically, anyone can contact and connect with anyone else in the world, we are experiencing a lack of community.

Does anyone else find this curious and frustrating?