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April 28, 2003
social circle balance beam
mamamusings: ridiculously easy group-unforming
Liz Lawley was part of a distribution list that lead to the invitation on a mailing list. Dave Winer had started the list and invited some select bloggers and social software players. She discusses how social software may not be a new concept but still deserves attention.
Anyway a spat with Dave Winer ensued resulting in him silencing the yahoo group and making it moderated. Regardless of what people are thinking about "social software" at the moment, the best demonstration of the kinks in the hose were, as Liz discusses, the ability to silence everyone. This showed how a budding group producing good discussion can break like a light bulb thrown to the grown. No more light, no more thoughts.
P2P was a popular term when Napster, Gnutella, Kazaa, and other file-sharing networks came about and then the scope broadened to include blogging and other communication mediums. A lot of people believe that the P2P bubble popped just like the dot com one did but it's still alive. The bubble just keeps growing even though smaller ones around it pop. The fact is that P2P didn't start when file-sharing programs came about, it started when humans started talking. It is just a medium encompassing a bunch of different technologies and the people make the medium, not the other way around. There's no doubt that the medium dictates the scope but once people decide to expand beyond what the original means allows, they develop something new.
Blogging still isn't the easiest thing still because computers remain difficult to use to many and the breadth of information out there is still difficult to wade through. Out of all of this though we will keep evolving and learn better and better ways. We just need to keep plugging away, in the end it will make the world a different place, hopefully for the better but possibly for the worse.
Posted by beamz at April 28, 2003 11:55 AM
Comments
Hey, if you get a chance, check out http://www.blogshares.com
Beware, tho, it's very addicting. ;)
I'm helping to put together the 'BlogStreet Journal' - been interesting to work with others (literally) around the world...
Posted by: kpaul at April 29, 2003 7:12 PM