Global Neighborhoods: Overview 3.0

My thanks for your input on the previous version.  You have in fact forced me to see this book more clearly than I previously did, and perhaps more clearly than Scoble and I did when we began the journey that became Naked Conversations.

Please do it again. This will be my final posting of this overview as I move on to the Table of Contents (TOC).  Your changes will appear i it when I post the final TOC. Please coent on the tagline which has also been changed. So please give me your best shot.

Title

Global Neighborhoods
--How Social Media are moving power from institutions to  people

Overview

Human nature has remained pretty much the same since we were hanging out in caves. What keeps changing are the tools we use to explore and communicate. It has been a long, strange trip from the ox cart to the rocket ship, but in fact, we ain't seen nothing yet.

Now. internet technology is allowing people in modern and developing nations to form new neighborhoods, defined not by physical boundaries, but by common interests. Huge communities are forming at MySpace, YouTube, Bebo, Second Life, Flickr, FaceBook, Skype, and in the blogosphere.

These online communities, in themselves, are as overwhelming, complex and perhaps as dangerous as any large city. If it were tangible, YouTube would have five time more daily visitors than Sao Paolo, the world’s largest. But visitors don’t dwell in chaos withy the 100 million other visitors. Instead they find and are discovered by people with whom they share common interests. In fact, inside YouTube, you’ll find lovers of unknown rock groups.  They never notice that elsewhere in the community may be film clips intended to recruit young terrorists.

Essential to the overwhelming success of these online communities is that people find neighborhoods that appeal to them and ignore the ones that don’t—just like in the tangible world. They share spaces in each community with others who share their passion for anything from bird watching to bomb making. These are neighborhoods where geography is becoming irrelevant.

It is very much like in the real world, where the neighborhood on one side of the street is very different than one across the other. Most people are comfortable in their own neighborhoods, because they know the rules, culture and language local jargon and innuendos. We know the best shortcuts and what areas to avoid. When we need a recommendation, we ask a neighbor. We trust local experts.

This behavior is now moving to the internet, where people do not have to be physically present to live in a community, or for that matter, be recognized as a leader in it. Each of us can now live in  several neighborhoods, simultaneously, where our neighbors are people from anywhere, with whom we share that particular interest.

These are global neighborhoods. They may not be tangible, but they are far from virtual.
Real people separated by miles, oceans and political borders are connecting with others of like mind. They are conducting a great deal of business, making decisions based on the influence of peers rather than marketing campaigns. In a few cases, friendships are being formed between people whose governments are waging hostilities. Even the profound barrier of diverse language is being lowered by the universal communications abilities of music and pictures.

While human nature may be staying the same, there is incredible change occurring at the cross hairs of technology and culture. People’s worlds are getting bigger.  Historically, when we ventured out of our neighborhoods on brief journeys for recreation, business or learning, we might have returned home with some sliver of a foreign culture--a picture, a garment or perhaps some music.  But now we are engaging with people in far off lands, being exposed to a multitude of cultural subtleties. People all over the world are seeing our cultural differences even as they realize how very much alike we all are.

At the core of Global Neighborhoods is a long and hopeful look at today’s teens and young adults. What will happen in a few short years, when this generation comes of age? The book reports on how the next generation is learning and experiencing in ways that prior generations could never imagine. A few cases in point:

•    A young Belgian woman goes to Israel to study photography. She has friends in both the Palestinian and Israeli sectors of Jerusalem and after a while, she persuades them to talk directly to each other.  They are both surprised to find they have many similarities. She determines that what worked for two friends may work for many other people as well. She brings her idea to a international teaching group and they create a private online community comprised of Palestinian and Israeli high schoolers who learn how much they share in common. Eventually to two classrooms meet, discovering how much they like each other and offering a glimmer of hope that maybe programs like this can diminish hostilities that have been going on for far too long.

•    A Scottish 16-year-old girl whose parents rarely traveled beyond their own neighborhood gets accepted into an advanced language studies c class. As a project, she produces and hosts a video podcast of the Dating Game—except that it’s in the Japanese language. It is well received 10,000 miles away in Japan. Now she talks regularly online with Chinese and Japanese friends and has been invited to go to Japan.  She’s even had to decline a marriage proposal.

•    A Scottish couple uses Second Life’s virtual reality program to engage Brooklyn ghetto kids with affluent Dutch suburban kids for a single summer. The result is both sets do better in school, the ghetto kids remarkably so. A significant portion of them decide not to drop out of school.  Grades go up. Career plans show higher ambitions.

Global Neighborhoods also examines the likely outcomes to the workplace of a generation that gets its information and places its trust on peers rather than institutions.  It asks what happens when they enter the mainstream marketplaces as customers, employees and potential competitors. It examines how businesses will need to adjust course to gain credibility  with a generation that has cultivated a Teflon resistance to traditional marketing techniques.

A case in point on how this is achieved is illustrated at Hitachi, one of the 100 largest companies on earth, which entrusted a 31-year-old mid-level employee to use social media to bolster its worldwide Data Systems division.  He created a wiki that invited not just customers, but even competing vendors to join and contribute. The result being primarily that the user, not the vendor, gains power, but Hitachi becomes the perceived category leader for its contributions.

The book also explains why politicians and government officials are stampeding into the social media in pursuit of voters and the people who most influence them.  It catches David Cameron who hopes to replace Tony Blair as British prime minister squatting on an Edinburgh sidewalk, chatting with a homeless person for the benefit of his campaign video blog camera. It examines the blog of Anthony Williams, mayor of Washington DC whose popularity has soared since he started blogging. It reports on why two Italian cabinet ministers are blogging even though their country has only 30 percent broadband adoption today.  In exclusive interviews with the president and former prime minister of tiny Estonia, the author reports on why these national leaders say over 90 percent of voters under age 25, voted in the most recent election—entirely online and why the Internet makes their nation the world’s most direct democracy.

The book also dedicates a chapter to the darker side of the social media explosion, examining the multitude of spammers, sploggers and assorted scammers.  It looks also at the more serious aspects of blogs by skinheads, recruiting films by al Qaeda and the president of Iran who is using a blog to establish himself as the world leader in anti Zionism.

Global Neighborhoods also examines the shortcoming of these new geographically agnostic relationships.  It argues that all this online touching and talking still falls short of a face- to-face meeting or direct interactive conversation. But it sees the solution in the disruptive explosion of very low cost telephony services.  Likewise, low-cost airlines are making it easier for more people to travel further and more often than ever before.
The author concludes that despite the significant troubles of the world today, and the numerous threats to a free internet, despite the fact that the powerful tools of the internet are available to bad guys as well as good, there is great hope in the new tomorrow through the decentralization of influence via the internet.

The author recollects that when asked why the US wanted to recognize China, Henry Kissinger observed that countries that do business with each other are unlikely to go to war against each other.  Global Neighborhoods extends the argument, contending that like the Palestinian and Israeli students, people, who get to know each other, and understand each other’s cultures, are unlikely to want to wage hostilities. 

Target Audience

This book fits into three bookseller categories: Business, General Interest and Current Affairs very much like recent best-sellers such as The World is Flat, The Wisdom of Crowds, Freakonomics and Blink.

It also will appeal to any parents curious to see what the world may look like as their children come of age.

Comments

[Joseph A di Paolantonio]

Shel, version 3 is much, MUCH tighter than version 2.

I have one tiny, little nit to pick - the first sentences of four paragraph are so similarly structured, using the word "also" that it made a bump while reading.

I also think there is one nut left to crack for you, and that is in defining your target audience. I think that executives and markcom folk from consumer oriented companies [soft drinks to software] would find this book to be of great value.

Oh, here are the four beginnings:

"Global Neighborhoods also examines the likely outcomes..."

"The book also explains why politicians and government officials are..."

"The book also dedicates a chapter to..."

"Global Neighborhoods also examines the shortcoming of..."

[Jane Genova]

Shel, this is so much more focused - and, yes, powerful.

[Tac Anderson]

wow. i love it. yeah there are some minor typos and such but I'm ready to place my order today.

[Niti Bhan]

just testing, shel. delete pls if it actually goes through

[marc canter]

dude - make sure to contrast these giant centralzied SNS - from the upswell of 10,000s of smaller, intimate decentralzied SNS.

That's where the future is. The average person will be a member fo 8-10 of these sort of networks.

And also one's ability to control and move their 'social capital' and 'content' between these networks.

[Doug Karr]

Shel,

Looking forward to reading it. My blog would never be as big as it is had it not been for reading Naked Conversations.

I'm reading Mavericks at Work right now and I'm not sure it's really accurate with regard to Social Networks... his impression is that 'more = better'.

I don't think it is 'more = better'. I think it's 'more = more chances of finding better'. I'm not sure if that makes sense but I liken it to buying lottery tickets. Buy 1 and you don't have a chance, buy 100,000,000 and your chances of winning are much better.

That's the value of social networking. I believe Social Neighborhoods are the ultimate outcome - where like people look for and find their 'neighborhood'. I'm curious if it compares in any way to IRC a few years ago... where people would wander the net at night finding the right chat room. Once they found it, they stuck.

Blog networks and social networking is not something that gets bigger (ie. Global... like MySpace), I believe it's actually something that get's smaller (ie. Neighborhood... like Pat Coyle http://www.patcoyle.net is trying to do with mycolts.net).

I can't wait for the book. It's a fascinating evolution of the web and transformation of global communications!

Regards,
Doug

[shel israel]

Niti,

I'm glad that the folks at Six Aart have stopped blockingyou as a spammer. I'm going to leave this up at least long enough to be sure that they see your comment and understand your frustration.

[Deepak]

Shel

Excellent overview. It has definitely become tighter (I just read all three today). Global neighborhoods as you define them are inevitable, if not already a reality. There are some open questions that I would like to see answers to. First and foremost, as companies and people realize the business value of these neighborhoods, will the resulting commercialization hinder the proper growth of these neighborhoods? Will the people in power, not currently a part of this conversation, realize the need to participate, or at least listen.

In the end though, I think you hit the nail on the head. It's all a big global conversation, and its fun to be part of it.

[Jeremiah Owyang]

I'm 30 still..not quite 31 yet!

This may help tighten up your tagline:

Current:
--How Social Media are moving power from institutions to people

Suggested:
--How Social Media moves power from institutions to people

[shel israel]

Deepak,
You are hitting on a question that I am really wrestling with. Right now the power is moving to the communities. Historically, by the time incumbents realize how significant the changes are, it is too late for them. Now, we have the rapid emergence of new leaders in the new neighborhoods, most of them measured by the popularity of their blogs. Do they become the new top-down holders of power, or does the community continue to usurp those who claim power without being generous to the community. It will be a real test and I'm watching this very closely.

[Donal]

Count me in as a buyer.

[Deepak]

Shel,
It will be very interesting to find out where this will go and what the impact will be. Hopefully the new "influentials" realize their power comes from the communities they foster and don't fall prey to the belief that its all about them (even if it is)

[FrankB]

Hi Shel,

wow, what a transformation! I've been off for a few days and come back to v3! This is real progress :-)

Questions: What kind of comments are you looking for? Does Nitpicking (typos, phrases etc.) make sense now or do you think you will change the text completely again as you did in previous versions?
How about the length of it? Do you want it to be shorter or is this a good length for such an overview (don't have a clue)?

Some points in advance:

-After looking it up at the wikipedia in Portuguese, English and German I'm pretty sure that Sao Paulo instead of Sao Paolo (which just redirects to the former) is at least more common.

- To reiterate Josephs point: I think the word also does have lots of unnecessary appearances (6). For me it's kind of a filler that is used if someone doesn't know how to connect two ideas/ paragraphs/ sentences.

- As for the tagline: I'll think about it some more but Jeremiahs tagline does sound better in my ears.

Frank, looking forward to the TOC and your answers ;-)

[shel israel]

Welcome back, Frank,
Thanks for the overall thumbs up. I'm really not concerned with typos at this point. Before finalizing it, I'm pretty good at catching grammar and spelling glitches. If you and other folk catch them, it makes my work that much easier and I appreciate the help. I've already incorporated Jeremiah's tagline. It is much better.

[Pat Phelan]

Wow Shel
You have really tightened it up.
It looks and sounds great.I really like the following line and would love you to expand upon it.
"Global Neighborhoods also examines the likely outcomes to the workplace of a generation that gets its information and places its trust on peers rather than institutions"

[Curt]

Infinitely better, Shel. The tagline means something. The Argument is 'surprising yet inevitable.' The pieces build upon one another. 'Global neighborhood' is not just a Brand Name. It's now a concept, uncontrived, with interesting ramification. The What, in other words, is followed by the So What and I care. I love the emphasis on the Real Peopletude of this tech's use. It's not "cyberspace" (safely ridiculous). It's people.

You're no Terry Pratchett, but guess what? I would read the book described here, and it sounds like one others would read as well.

[shel israel]

Pat,
Thanks for the kind words. Trust me, that is a thought that will be expanded significantly.

[shel israel]

Curt,

Thanks, now all I need is another 39,999,999 readers and I can catch up to Pratchett.

[Dennis Howlett]

Stating the obvious perhaps Shel but why is Global Neighborhoods hosted on a site titled Naked Conversations?

[Ric]

Dennis - you're being snarky again! The point about a physical neighbourhood is that it has a physical limit - we might place it at different distances but there is a limit. And even where we might be part of different physical communities (a 'neighbourhood', a sports club, work, school etc.) - they are stillphysicaly limited. The point about the global neighourhood is that it isn't just ONE neighbourhood - it is potentially dozens, hundreds - as many as we can mentally (virtually?) deal with.

[Valeria Maltoni]

Long Tail meets The World is Flat.

Fast Company readers' network was at the fore of that phenomenon as the magazine was at the fore at the onset. I've been involved with that online and face-to-face for 6+ years. An Italian/European by culture/education living/working in the US. Corporate by day, blogger and conversation agent all the time.

How can I help contribute to the conversation?

[shel israel]

Dennis,

There are a couple of reasons that Global Neighbo[u]rhoods is being hosted here. At some point, the name of this blog will become Global Neighborhoods, while the Red Couch URL will remain intact. The problem I cannot resolve is that someone owns the Global Neighborhoods URL. The registrant email bounces back. It expires in March and I will try to get it then. Any ideas?

[deb schultz]

shel - keep it up --nice stuff!

[Des Walsh]

Reads well to me and I agree with Jeremiah about the tagline.

Minor item. I don't know about US usage but I would have thought "at the crossroads" is more apt than "at the cross hairs". In my observation, "cross hairs" is normally prefaced with "in", as in "caught in the cross hairs". I'm assuming you mean "where technology and culture meet", which would again make "crossroads" the more apt term.

[Robert Bruce]

Shel,

I did not like the opening paragraph. It needs a bridge from cave dwelling to rocketships so I swapped the end of para 1 to open it instead and so it flows better. Makes sense now. I think?!

It has been a long, strange trip from the ox cart to the rocket ship, but in fact, we ain't seen nothing yet. Human nature has remained pretty much the same since we were hanging out in caves but what kept changing are the tools we use to explore and communicate.
Now, internet technology is allowing people in modern and...................