Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Thinking Spatially
In a portion of The Rise of Personalized Networking, Barry Wellman makes a point about how everything does not have to be spatial anymore, even though we still think that way. This point really struck me because it reminded me of a conversation, I participated in, in another class. In my class, we were talking about various election reforms, and a teacher posed a question asking why we elect representatives geographically; instead, she suggested, now that we have the Internet to make it plausible, why are we not organizing the country by beliefs, race, or another important category? This question was shocking to me because I never even considered organizing our political system any other way than by geography. However, even though the idea of reorganizing representation sounded interesting, I ended up defending our geographical method of choosing representatives, emphasizing that certain parts of the country and their specific issues might get overlooked with a new system. Nonetheless, it made me think. Bringing that lesson, and Barry Wellman's point back to our class, I wonder now that we have the potential to organize in a non-spatial manner how useful a tool that is. Our social network is organized geographically. We are not looking past the Boston area right now. On the other hand, how useful would it instead be to create a world wide social network map for hunger or for homelessness? There are positives and negatives to each method, and I am curious about other opinions on the issue.
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That is really interesting. I never thought about elections like that, and why we don't do it any other way besides geography.
ReplyDeleteI think it would be really useful to have the option of creating a map for different ideas like "hunger" or "homelessness" instead of just geography, especially since the point of this map is to be able to help people. So it could offer "help" in whatever area the person is interested in if the map is able to sort out/organize the organizations in this manner. However, I don't think we should get rid of the geography aspect, because it still has some relative importance. I think that having the option of grouping them up while you're using the map to whatever you want would be beneficial.
I agree with Emily and Akrati that having the option to choose the manner in which the map is organized would be an innovative and beneficial attribute for our map. Obviously, having a spatially organized map is necessary because we want it to be as user-friendly as possible and a spatially organized map is the format most universally understood. Having the option to organize around our nodes (people, organizations, issues) also has significant benefits that allow users to customize our experience, and is something we have already discussed. I really support maximizing customization for the user, though, so I think we should look at more ‘outside-the-box’ manners around which the map may be organized. For example, there are several options to organize around events. This can be done temporally, with recent, current, or upcoming events. It can also be organized around the nature of the event: rallies, group service, individual service, consumer events, etc. This would be a good option to pursue as a marketing technique for increased organizational participation. Organizations might be more inclined to update their node about upcoming events/opportunities if they know that users might be accessing a map that is organized specifically around upcoming events or opportunities for involvement.
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