Ben Compton wrote:
> Earlier I suggested we might become more open and more personal about our
> experiences in working inside organizations. I would add another question
> which may open us up to new ideas and experiences. I take it from William
> J. Mitchell's book "City of Bits."
--snip--
> And so what better group of people to ask the question then us:
> What type of lives do we want to live in the electronically mediated
> environment? What type of communities do we want to have in cyberspace?
> And finally, how will the answer to both of those questions impact our
> organizations and our work life and the way we learn as individuals and as
> part of an organization?
Ben--thanks for asking this question. It's been a tacit part of my
thinking for sometime now, but I simply was unable to articulate it until,
of course, you did so for me. (Thanks, again).
I'm a community activist, volunteer, do-gooder--whatever label or category
you want to put me in. I believe that we are missing significant human,
face-to-face, hand-to-hand, connections in our physical communities. I am
committed to trying in so many ways to reverse that trend in my
community--through open space events, human service activities, and
attempting to remain connected myself. This is a very difficult task
within our fragmented society.
What the internet has done for me has been to allow me to connect with
others outside my physical community. It's a different experience,
because its' relative anonymity allows some greater intimacy than most
people are willing to allow when we meet face-to-face. If anything, Ben,
this "cyber-community" has become a well for me to drink from and be
nourished. I run to my "real" community refreshed with a "virtual" model
in my mind about dialogue, discourse, intimacy, caring, and so forth.
I'm also convinced that my interaction with you and the others who share
this HTML (talk about the plasticity of language) with us is a brief
respite, I hope, from those with whom I should share tactile
experiences--nonverbal intimacies--and simply being. Perhaps (as so many
of my significant others proclaim) this is simply an entertainment media
rather than a community. If so, it's far more enriching than most other
forms of entertainment. So, despite my interest (and time spent) in this
medium, I'm just not so committed to working on the relationships in this
cyber-community as I am within this little community that I live in. The
stakes are just not high enough on the web--but they are too too high just
down the street. So, like the opportunist that I apparently am, I'll pop
in--get nourished intellectually and spiritually by the likes of you, Ben,
then go back to this wonderful life and try to add value to it.
peace, brother!
Doc Holloway
-- "To nurture rich insights and intuitions, a knowledge-creating company needs diversity in the pool of talents available within the company. This diversity enhances requisite variety, which is one of the enabling conditions for the organization." -Ikujiro Nonaka and Hirotaka TakeuchiThresholds--developing critical skills for living organizations Visit us at <http://www.thresholds.com/community/learnshops/index.html> Or send your e-mail to me at <mailto:learnshops@thresholds.com> P.O. Box 2361 Phone:01 360 786 0925 Olympia, WA 98507 USA Fax: 01 360 709 4361
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>