Fascinating. Thanks so much for this thought. Immediately after I read your article I read this which I thought you would find interesting.
"The range of human knowledge today is so great that we're all specialists and the distance between specializations has become so great that anyone who seeks to wander freely among them almost has to forego closeness with the people around him."
A fascinating quote from Robert M Pirsig's 1974 masterpiece Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance, which I read again recently. It's a phenomenon that I've become more aware of on the career front over the past few years, especially since my career break last year.
My big-picture, generalist tendencies tend to make me look like a jack of all trades to many IT recruiters, so my freelancing efforts of the past six months have been quite useful in helping me to narrow my focus down to a more clearly-defined (i.e. marketable) area: knowledge management.
Pirsig's comment has had me thinking on a broader scale, though. It's more relevant than ever, thirty years later, in the information-saturated world of the web and multi-channel TV. The concept of the Long Tail indicates that specialisation in all areas of life is only likely to increase.
"... where the Long Tail works, minority tastes are catered to, and individuals are offered greater choice. In situations where popularity is currently determined by the lowest common denominator, a Long Tail model may lead to improvement in a society's level of culture."
Communities are necessarily based on a common denominator; the "lower" it is, the more inclusive the community becomes. In an ever more specialised world, does the almost recursive act of slicing and dicing undermine the entire notion of commonality?
In other words, when previously I might have called myself a railway enthusiast but now I specialise in enthusing about 1890s East Midlands railway infrastructure signage (sans serif only), have I just made the act of defining my "community" easier or more difficult?
Maybe the biggest psychological shift of the noughties will come to be seen in future decades as the expansion of our community memberships from the traditional handful (family, workplace, residence, hobby, etc.) to tens or even hundreds of special interest groups.
Or, to put it another way by going back to the Pirsig quote that started off this chain of thought in the first place, maybe this will become the decade during which we learn how to wander freely between these myriad expressions of self, whilst yet maintaining a sense of togetherness.
Posted by Hg on Thursday 21 June 2007 at 13:51.
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Looks like that link of yours was temporary and has expired. If there another way to get to this content (search terms, etc.)?
Well, bugger me. Now that link does work after all. When I first tried it, I got some kind of message about how the temporary link had expired.
By the way, yes - I do find it interesting. Thanks. It's covering similar territory to the TV stuff I was thinking about, which I removed from this post because otherwise it was going to get too long. But roughly speaking, this is what I would have said.
About 25-30 years ago, when there were still only three TV stations in the UK, every Thursday evening I'd sit down with my younger sister, parents and grandma to watch Tomorrow's World, Top Of The Pops, Sapphire & Steel, Only Fools & Horses and probably some wildlife show.
That was all mainstream TV, in the way that everything's mainstream when there's only three channels. In the playground at school the next morning (and no doubt in universities and workplaces across the land), the first half hour's conversation of the day was all about what we'd watched.
It bound us together. Now we're all off choosing our niche TV shows from our 1000+ Sky channels (or downloading stuff because there's "nothing to watch", or playing on our Wiis, or writing our blogs, or texting/IMing our mates) and that kind of thing never happens.
Maybe it was a superficial kind of "community" in those days, but you did at least feel you were part of something. Now I'm a member of numerous (mostly internet-based) "communities" which feel broader and richer, but I sometimes wonder if they have the same depth.
Lots of fascinating ideas in your post to consider. Seems to me that the Internet made admittance to many communities a lot easier, lowering the bar through technology. And yet, not only do many of these communities lack depth for which they make up in "width" or linkeages), but also, maintaining them, I think, takes a lot more effort -- strangely enough when one considers the ease of technology for access to them.
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