twopointouch

An inter­esting analogy of the changes of activity on the internet with grammar.

Ross Mayfield’s Weblog: Web of Verbs

Yesterday Alex Pang held a fas­cin­ating con­ver­sa­tion at an IFTF open space meeting on the use of the term Cyberspace. The notion of the internet as a place seems to be degrading. Alex will probably produce a far more artic­u­late piece about this and I should have channeled in the Doc or David Weinberger (thus so), but wanted to get out some thoughts.

Clay Shirky coined Social Software when he found that group­ware didn’t account for the group forming activity both in the consumer and enter­prise space and aug­menting in-​​room inter­ac­tion (e.g. Meetups). I use the word augment very pur­posely, as the Web’s greater innov­a­tion over the past couple of years has not been about tech­no­logy or personal personal pro­ductivity, but enhan­cing our cap­ab­il­ities to act with groups.

NetGens think of the computer as a door, not a box. When they are on, they have 5–7 IM windows open and multiple tabs into dif­ferent com­munities. Each com­munity provides a way of being, to express facets of their identity while engaging in an activity. Most activ­ities are centered around objects to spin stories and hold con­ver­sa­tions. They don’t go to places, it’s more likely they augment plazes in the real world. With increasing mobility they tap groups for what they need to get done no matter where they are and make where they are matter. They Google, Flickr, Blog, con­tribute to Wikipedia, Socialtext it, Meetup, post, sub­scribe, feed, annotate and above all share. In other words, the web is increas­ingly less about places and other nouns, but verbs.