My Next Book: Global Neighborhoods

I’ve decided the working title for my new book will be titled Global Neighborhoods. How do you like it?

I’ve been struggling with what this book is actually about for a while.  It is not the companies themselves that fascinate me, nor is my writing necessarily about technology.  It’s more about the impact of technology on humanity and how that all shapes culture.

I’ve been having a lot of conversations with interesting people. There were other purposes connected to these conversations, but there was also some ad hoc collaboration going on.

Two people have influenced me, not just in the title selection but in determining the focus. Charlene Li told me that online communities make geography irrelevant.  These communities are where the power traditionally in the hands of large organizations is going to.

The second person is my friend and client, Martin Green, general manager of CNET Communities. The division is about o make a whole lot of announcements, some of which are pretty dramatic, but I’ll leave that to them to talk about. What has been relevant is to watch the evolution of Martin’s thinking about what makes CNET Communities unique. He talks about its communities being not necessarily the largest communities—but the ones filled with the most passionate members on a particular topic.  He talks about the importance of neighborhoods in each community.  Neighborhoods are where people feel safe, where they can share all sorts of stuff with people they trust, with people who have common interests.

Martin’s thinking has been resonating with increasing decibels to me.

Global Neighborhoods will be about the shifting of power from companies to people.  It will be about the companies who are trying to flourish by giving up control rather than clutching it. It will be about global startups and communities of people who are bound by passions not borders.

Thanks, Charlene.  Thanks Martin.

More to come.

Comments

[Robert Scoble]

Interesting! Can't wait to see it.

For me, the interesting thing is I had lunch today with a Microsoft employee who works in India. He found me because of my blog. I found him to be fascinating and I found the conversation to be fascinating.

This world is collapsing. Global neighborhoods ahead!

[Don Thorson]

Shel,

Solid idea. I've been thinking about this same topic. I met with Jajah recently who have a unique voip / hybrid telephony solution which is so cheap and so easy to use that it effectively "shrinks distance". I think of it as yet another acclerator in the flat world formula.It relates to your topic in the followinng way: The richer and cheaper the mediums we use to communicate, the further we will extend our physical communities. We can't see or currrently understand, the implications - just as we couldn't know at the time, the effect of trains and planes on society, world economies, politics and even the human gene pool - but its a very big deal.

[Laurent Flores]

Shel - can not wait to read it. And actually, I wrote for an up coming article in IMedia Connection about the the world as being a little village, or better the web is made of as many little villages as there are people sharing the same interests and passions. So I live in a village where I know that geographic boundaries become completely irrelevant...in this village we become global neighbors...I travel quite a bit, and am more and more amazed of how this is changing the way I relate to people and life in general, and to the world.
So good working title indeed, we are all global neighbors of a global village.
Best
Laurent Flores

[Stephen]

Shel,

Great name. I have been using the term "Innovation Value Networks" to describe some of this effect as we work with companies to work outside the box within the corporate box.

[Gautam Ghosh]

Hi Shel,

How about renaming it to Global Identities? Identities have traditionally been defined by race, religion, generational and nation. Now there's an added dimension...digital and virtual identity.

People interact with each other more at a cognitive and intellectual level. So apart from Neighborhoods it's also a difference as to how we percieve ourselves.

regards
Gautam

[Shel Israel]

Gautam and Laurent--Those are both nice thoughts, but this book is not about the global village or digital identities--not at its core. At its core is that in our connected world, we all find places where we feel safe, where we share the most in common with other people, where we can share informatrion and ideas that are relevent to each of us. I would find you in several of the neighborhoods where I like to hang out online, but probably not all. These neighbrhoods are defined by interests and passions not geography. In fact the dimunition of geographical relevence s a very big point in this book as I am beginning to define it.

[Paul Morriss]

I like the name. I think I know immediately what it's going to be about. There's quite a history to cover too, as you'll probably want to go back into the dim and distant past before the web when we had USENET newsgroups (I know we still do), and bulletin boards.

Are you going to be talking to those who aren't in such a community, or those who are?

[Alan A. Reiter]

Best of luck with the new book.

One thought: You might consider a discussion of how wireless ties so many of us together.

I've been analyzing wireless for almost 28 years, and the ramifications of wireless imaging truly are changing things.

I've pontificated for a few years that I believe camera phones -- with their ability to almost instantaneously transmit photos and videos and, now, receive live television -- are changing business processes and consumer interaction.

(No, I don't sell any of this stuff -- no hardware, software or airtime. I just do wireless data consulting.)

Wireless is empowerment of the individual as well as the "masses." For many people the cellular phone, not the computer, is the main Internet access device.

[Rambling Librarian]

I like the title. Here's a thought: "Global Neighborhoods" work only if there's a common language, or if the language barrier can be breeched. Otherwise, the neighbourhood is pretty small and limited to certain parts of the globe rather than being truly global.

[Jeremiah Owyang]

I'm quite interested in this topic as well. I often think about the sum of all the media tools, and the leverage it allows many to quickly communicate --in some cases removing the middleman (business, governments, brokers, newspapers)

I'm also fascinated with the idea of commodity software and hardware for enablement of global conversations. (like the 50 dollar laptop, and a free blog) How do these cheap tools enable even underprivileged individuals to be part of the global conversation?

It would be interesting to see if your book could challenge the rule of 7 degrees of separation --has that changed with online media?

[Kami Huyse]

I don't dislike it. However, it brings to mind "The World is Flat." Not sure if you want that association or not -- given its success, maybe so.

The title idea "Passionate Connections" came to me as you wrote about its purpose, it would pair well with "Naked Conversations," but then again, maybe its too overt.

[Shel Israel]

Kami,
The implication that this book touches upon the "World is Flat" is intentional. It's a great book, but Tom Friedman focused on the gobal enterprise--on UPS and how Microsoft finds the best and brightest people in China. Global Neighborhoods looks at the transfer of power from large organizations to communities of people and the opportunities and advantages shifting from large global corporations to the new global micro-corporations.

[Shel Israel]

Kami, Part 2. In many ways the new book follows the path of naked Conversations, but it will address a broader slice of the world than an exciting new tool for business. It will try to address the issue of how humanity s being transformed by a connected world.

[Kevin Baggs]

Same here, first thing that came to mind when I saw the title was The World is Flat. Your distinction help to define the title better. I also like the oxymoron. The Web is evolving or maybe we're evolving and the web is catching up?? (I think its not too late to rename Web 2.0). It seems to all be around community. The buzz words are folksonomy and coopetition. Or maybe its just about sharing. MySpace, Open Source, Blogs, Wiki, Digg, Del.icio.us, Podcasts, RSS, Share.opml.org and on and on and on...