Flow My Thoughts, The IT Professor Said

A Human Web

http://www.informit.com/articles/article.asp?p=170177&seqNum=1

The IT arena has always had community elements [and seen itself as a defined community: 'the geeks'], but as IT becomes more pervasive, in one sense that community becomes so large that it evaded easy identification. In another sense, what some commentators are seeing as enabled by IT is "social networking", as discussed in this article.

Blogs and RSS are important components of social networking, but the full range of tools, with their advantages and disadvantages are also covered here. The fact that mobile computing proliferates terminals simply makes the potential for social networking all that more extensive.

There is a lot to this, but there is one aspect which needs further commentary, having a double-edged aspect. The first edge comes out when the author remarks "Surely you've been invited by someone to Friendster or Orkut" -- well, in fact I have not been, and don't expect to be soon, even though I am tightly connected to the InterNet. So some people will be excluded from social networking by their nature. The second edge is that a significant portion of the populace lacks access to the IT network, and always will do so. To the extent that social networking comes to define 'the human community', this represents another (and extreme) case of technological marginalization.

That someone so insensitive to 'people' issues like myself should come to this realization with such speed says something about this phenomenon, though as usual, I can't say exactly what.