Tagged: social networking

I’ve had difficulty explaining my networking concepts without resorting to some exasperated cliche like, “that’s just how I think about it.” Well, turns out that scientists at the National Institute of Mental Health are coming to the conclusion that that’s actually how the brain thinks. Of course that’s how I think about it. It’s literally …

Ray Oldenburg is an urban sociologist who writes about the importance of informal public gathering places. In his book The Great Good Place, Oldenburg demonstrates why these gathering places are essential to community and public life. He argues that bars, coffee shops, general stores, and other “third places” (in contrast to the first and second …

China’s “Netizens” number 130 million – and are growing 30% every year. Second only to the U.S., China is installing Broadband everywhere and internet cafes are the size of K-Marts and as abundant as Starbucks. In 2005, Dr. Guo Liang of the Chinese Acadamy of Social Sciences published a study showing that only two thirds …

Over here at Future Majority, I answered a question about how one can make MySpace work. I brought up an example of “virtual-to-field back to virtual mobilization.” The hugely unfunny and equally popular comic Dane Cook is the example. The basic point is that the best political tools on the internet have been invented by …

Culture grows and spreads through environments organically. It evolves. When culture spreads via built environments, its evolution can be intelligently designed. Consider this example: What I know of as Lindy Hop, that athletic, exuberant, acrobatic dance, was essentially invented at the Savoy Ballroom in 1935 by Frankie Manning. Like so many things at the time, …

What is the culture of MySpace? Youth culture in my town’s high school was dominated by the jocks and their rivals, the burnouts. The closer the burnouts were to jocks, preps, or worse their parents, the more miserable they felt about themselves. The further away from the mainstream, the greater their self-respect and higher their …

Malcolm Gladwell wrote an article in The New Yorker in 1999 called “Six Degrees of Lois Weisberg.” In it, he tangentially explains how it’s been mathematically proven that Kevin Bacon is NOT the most connected actor, that distinction goes to Burgess Meredith (Rocky’s trainer). Why? For value, the 70 year length of Meredith’s career was …