Web groups versus real groups: Example 1

I'm reading Small Pieces Loosely Joined, by David Weinberger right now. It's probably going to be the last non-academic (or at least non-academically-assigned) reading I get to do for awhile. It's supposed to be the Marshall McLuhan of the web. Got interested in it after reading Joe Trippi's book, which was pretty much revolutionary for me. Open source organizing, man, yeah. I don't know what it means for the Sierra Club yet, but I will.

Anyway, the first few chapters didn't have me too impressed, but today I got to the one on Togetherness and things started clicking. Weinberger writes, "the Web is about groups -- people who, in one way or another, can look into another's eyes. Groups are the heart of the Web. (pg 105)" He goes on to argue that the web is revolutionizing groups.

It IS revolutionizing groups, no doubt. What I'm trying to work out is the HOW of it. I've already seen and experienced how the growth of the web can/does undermine traditional organizations. Communications in MCSEA is the classic example. When I was in high school, every week we had the meaty task of calling all of our members (50-75 phone calls) and reminding them of the weekend meeting/other events happening during the week. This gave us a headcount of who to potentially expect, but more importantly, it was a tremendous organizational development tool. First off, each week I would select the dozen or so calls I was going to make. I'd pick new members, people who'd recently missed meetings, or people who seemed up-and-coming in the group. Those phone conversations let me hear what they thought of the organization and let me build social capital simply by joking around with each of them for awhile. Beyond that, the rest of the calls provided an easily-accesible and yet still vital task for other members of the group. Every Problem Is an Organizing Opportunity. The problem of making massive numbers of calls was essential to healthy group development.

E-mail changed all that. In its later years, MCSEA (and every other student enviro group I've seen), discarded phone trees for e-mail alerts. E-mail alerts were quick and easy, they seemed like an ideal answer to the meeting-reminder problem. But the group lost a lot from this. There is no two-way interaction from e-mail alerts. They are just as easy to ignore as they are to send. They get lost in the clutter, the background noise, that infests the World Wide Web. And, most importantly, solving the problem eliminates a dynamic organizing opportunity. I've counseled people at every organizational development training that I've run: "use phone calls, not e-mail!" But it does no good. Everyone is fundamentally busy. Now that the short cut is so easily available (and socially expected), only the most Luddite organizers are going to resist it.

Anyway, for years I've been one of the Luddites, finding the development of the web and web-based groups to be a tremendous drain on traditional organizing and social capital in general. But with the rise of moveon and meetup, along with blogs and bulletin boards like swingoutdc, I'm starting to wonder. The web isn't going away. It's going to continue to develop and evolve into a crucial piece of people's lives. Soon, organizations that don't get the web will be like organizations that don't get television or radio: their capacity will be limited to extremely cottage industries. What's more, organizations that embrace web evolution will still face real danger because each new development undermines fundamental assumptions. Web entrepreneurs are quickly discovering new things web-based groups can do, but what can't internet-based groups do? What natural functions of geographically-based groups are lost or displaced in the webworld and how do you make up for them?

Seems like the beginning of a genuine research question to me. It sits on the frontier of our knowledge, challenges us to consider First Principles, and offers the opportunity to change the world...