Assignment for 9/23

For next week's class, our goal is to find at least one student group on campus that is or has the potential to be involved in some form of economic recovery in Somerville, then add the group(s) to the YouthMap.

The list of student groups on campus can be found here.

Questions to Consider:

1. Have you/are you interested in working in Somerville?
2. If yes, what kind of project or work was it?
3. What "economic recovery assets" do/could you bring to Somerville?
4. How large is your organization on campus?
5. What other projects are you working on currently?
6. What other groups are you connected with on campus? What about off campus?
7. What is your most permanent contact information? (Group e-mail address, website)
8. What is your perception of the economic crises as it pertains to Somerville?
9. What services or educational resources are you providing in Somerville?

Tags

1. Education
2. Services
3. Volunteer
4. Potential
5. Actual

Please post your first choice of student organizations in the comments by Friday so that we don't overlap. Thanks!

Benkler

I agree with Dean in that Benkler said it best in one small sentence: “We are a networked society now.”  The Internet has permeated our lives in such a way that it has become one of our primary sources of communication.  Each and every one of us – with our Facebook profiles and email addresses – is active proof of that.  But not everyone is quite as supportive of these new developments, and Benkler doesn’t hesitate to acknowledge that.  Yet, while he recognizes others’ fears of increasing Internet communication equaling a decrease in community and quality of relationships, Benkler is quick to counter them with research that proves otherwise.  In fact, as Jenn said, Benkler also points out that social networking has actually increased the number of relationships made and further solidified pre-existing ones.  Now, not to trivialize these points Benkler makes, but I feel that any one of us could probably have drawn the same conclusions that yes, we connect with more people because of Facebook and yes, our pre-existing relationships are still very much in tact.  What he did say that struck me was his explanation of how the Internet allows for people to actually break out of certain social constraints.  I had learned of the whole Timothy McVeigh ordeal before, but it never crossed my mind to see his use of email as a social outlet.  And the example of Japanese teenagers really made me think of how different the reasons behind their use of social networking can be from ours.  Also, this doesn’t really fit in with everything I’ve just said, but I thought it was worth mentioning – in the few years since this was published, video chatting has become much more accessible and popular, and I would say this mode of Internet communication, more-so than any of the others, directly challenges any lingering concerns about the fading of face-to-face and quality of relationships.

Benklar, Putnam, and Dunbar's Number

Benklar provides a comprehensive overview of the recent research and discussion around the growing use of online social networking and the critiques of its impeding destruction of social capital and face to face interaction.

After reading Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone, I recognized a few key evolutions that have emerged since its publication. Although Putnam makes a legitimate argument in favor of social capital and the benefits it brings to society, particularly in terms of political participation, his arguments and fears are already outdated.

Benklar most strongly disproves Putnam's concerns by citing research that indicates most heavy Internet users spend the same amount of time with their friends and family as they did before their Internet use.

Another notable point that Benklar provides is that some connections made online have evolved to exist offline as well, with members of online networks arranging meetings in the real world to strengthen their ties. This behavior suggests that Putnam's concerns about the decline of face to face interaction leading to social capital is not only irrelevant, but perhaps backwards. The possibility of bringing online connections to life in the real world has the potential of increasing social capital by broadening the community of an individual and creating the possibility of expanding one's network to larger geographic, social, or political regions.

One point I find particularly interesting in this discussion is the measurement of the quality of these online relationships. In the beginning of Chapter 10, Benklar tells us that social networking has two effects. First, the strengthening of ties within one's own existing family and friendship circles. Second, there is an increase in the loose, limited-purpose relationships that are less important yet still meaningful to the individual. The ease of connecting with people once on the fringe of our network through sites like Facebook make it feasible to keep in touch with more people than ever thought possible before. Theories like Dunbar's number, which propose a limit to the number of quality connections one person can maintain at any given time, are being challenged with the advent of social networking and the ability to maintain relationships online. Having a database of one's connections throughout their lifetime could prove to be a useful networking tool or could end up being overwhelming.

I think this particular challenge will prove most prevalent in the Millennial generation, since we are the ones that have grown up online and been able to make those connections through Facebook as time goes on. Will we eventually be overwhelmed by the numbers of connections we've made, or will we find a way to use our robust network to benefit society and ourselves?

2009: A Networked Society

“We are a networked society now”. Benkler makes this statement in the very last paragraph of his chapter. I think that this short sentence could not be more succinct and blatantly true of our society today. It’s with that notion that originally made me want to sign up for this class. Our lives have become all about networks, relationships, communities, and communication. It’s amazing to be a part of this new internet social networking phenomenon, and to be able to grow with it, adapting and making changes that will allow each one us to better utilize newly developed skills and knowledge for the future. No longer, as Benkler mentioned, do we need to follow the trend of being boxed into a particular geographical region or area. Sites, like the “YouthMap”, can allow people from all over the world to explore and communicate with one another in an increasingly direct and driven way. With these continual advances, we are becoming a more efficient society when it comes to relationships, both weak and strong. We are able to make weak connections from the first email, because we are now able to gain background information, understand a group/person’s work, etc… from the net. Moreover with this, as Benkler suggested, people are molding their connections in such ways that they are able to reorganize their own social networks in a way that fits them the best. I believe that this will naturally lead to increased communication with people, along with increased ties made and human interaction over the net. Benkler states that family and friend ties were certainly thickened, and not supplanted, by the advances on the net; I think this is the same that will occur for our project. With a network web already in place for people to look at and use, relationships will be increasingly more simple to form between complete strangers and organizations. They will all share common goals, interests, etc… which help aid an immediate establishment of a weak tie. Occurrences like this were not possible ten years ago, but will soon become the norm for our society.