Global Neighborhoods TOC 2.0

As many of you have begun to gather, I am not a one-draft wonder. What follows is a significant rewrite of the Table of Contents. I look forward to your comments, which will let me know if I am primarily there, or if this document requires more work.

Please let me know what you think.

PART ONE:  What’s Happening

1.  … The more we remain the same

This allegorical chapter illustrates that human nature stays the same even as technology makes worlds bigger.

Boogi and Woogi, two skilled hunters are among the most revered members of their small, isolated cave-dwelling community of cave dwellers, living some 10,000 years ago in the shadow of a receding glacier.

These guys are held in such high esteem because they communicate in three ways. Not only do they bring home the mastodon, but they bring home valuable information and interesting stories from beyond the village edge. Finally, as travelers and hunters, they are constantly devising and refining tools.

These two have traveled further from the safety of their neighborhood than anyone else causing loved ones and neighbors to wonder and worry. In their travels, they have discovered the safest, warmest and most convenient places to stay. They follow known paths then make new ones when expedient. 

Sometimes Boogi and Woogi encounter other Cro-Magnon, who grunt with strange accents, difficult to understand. These encounters sometimes result in trades and shared information. Just as often they result in some serious attempts at skull bashing.

Over years, Boogi & Woogi become increasingly effective as a team. During hunts, they use subtle gestures to communicate. They continuously refine their tools to become better hunters. They devise a system to signal information back to the community by banging a rock on a hollow stump.

Boogi and Woogi often return home to an excited village hungry for food and information. At night, the community huddles around a cave fire to hear Boogi and Woogi tell their stories. Sometimes, they use sticks to draw maps in the cave floor dirt or illustrate their biggest adventures by drawing cave wall pictures with blood and berries.

The chapter concludes that through 100s of millennia, the human animal has pretty much remained the same at the core. We are taller, live longer, have better tools for building and killing, communicate so much better, know so much more about what the happens beyond the borders of where we live.

But by nature we remain curious and adventurous animals. We simply must go beyond where we’ve been. If it is our nature to stay close to home, we encourage others to go into outer space or to the bottom of the ocean and the community regards those brave people, who bring back new valuable, interesting information in the very highest esteem.

TS Eliot may have said it best: “Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.”

 2.   The virtual megalopolis

This chapter looks at the nature of tangible neighborhoods and why, in an era of massive urbanization, people cling to the comforts of their own neighborhoods, where they share interests and values with many of their neighbors.

It shows how this neighborhood unity gets diluted when one regards the huge megalopolises of more than 20 million people, filled with social and economic contrasts, seeming confusion and chaos, unknown dangers lurking up unknown streets. It discusses the mutual discomfort of a

Sao Paulo

squatter wandering through a rich neighborhood or a wealthy neighborhood inhabitant suddenly finding himself in the middle of a squatter village.

From there, the chapter compares real life cities to online communities, some of which are more than five times larger than the world’s largest cities. If MySpace, growing by 85,000 new inhabitants daily could have more than 200 million registered users by the end of 2007, making it larger than most countries.

From there, this pivotal chapter, introduces and defines a global neighborhood comparing its many similarities with tangible neighborhoods. Emphasizing that the relationships formed in virtual places are real, they have a certain added benefits. We can each join as many as we want where we find people all over the world who share our interests. These neighborhoods are organized from the bottom up and the rules of them are decided by those who reside there.  We are influenced by our peers and those who have the most influence, like Boogi and Woogi of yore, are held in the highest esteem.

Observing that hundreds of millions of people, perhaps over a billion, from over 100 countries are already participating in global neighborhoods, and the impact in recalibrating business, government and education has just begun. It points out that these global neighborhoods are inhabited mostly by a young population who are about to inherit the earth and change a great deal.

 

3. Social Media—a guided tour

This anecdote filled chapter takes readers on a brief tour of the best known online communities as well as some of the most interesting localized ones. The chapter will include some interviews with site executives, but the main focus will be reporting on user experiences—the enriching and odd anecdotes that tell the story of the attraction and power of the virtual communities.

The chapter will also examine some of the small community-oriented communities and how differently the “hometowns” are from the virtual megaloplises.

It also introduces the concept that global neighborhoods themselves may transcend virtual community site borders. The same people, sharing same interests keep finding each other at blog and photo sites. They enjoy the same audio and video broadcasts and clips. They may even meet in the real world at a selected event, attending not so much to hear a dais roster, as to meet face to face with people who they first got to know in a virtual community.

 

 4. Forget the crystal ball. Look at the kids.

The book’s most important premise is laid down in this chapter. To understand how business, and politics, education and culture will change in the next 5-10 years, watch the young people. The habits that they form between the ages of 16 and 25 are likely to remain with them through their lives. This developing generation does not watch television or read newspapers. They are immune to most of the 3000 marketing messages hurled at most of them every day. They do not believe products because a famous person has endorsed them.

Increasingly they get the information they use to make decisions from online resources and the people who most influence those decisions are their own global neighborhood peers.

The chapter takes a look at how the world is likely to change as this generation enters the marketplace and an older one leaves it.

5.  The Global Classroom

The chapter discusses the enormous opportunities for  social media in education along with its ability to offset one of the most universal liabilities of traditional teaching methods—classroom boredom.

The chapter spotlights

Scotland

, where the small country, perhaps surprisingly, seems to be at the forefront of using social media in education. The chapter uses specific examples of programs that are giving the children of people who rarely ever eft their small country a more global view and international friendships spawned in global neighborhoods.

It looks at virtual reality’s potential for bring history, geography and current events to life and it reports on a special program that shows autistic children getting fully immersed in virtual reality programs. The chapter envisions a next generation of Scots coming to age with a more global perspective on the world, who may use the internet to be part of a global company or profession while remaining in their own homes and country.

 6.  Politicians in Pursuit

Statistics in

America

indicate that most people make political decisions when they are young and then stick with them. Many form party loyalties well before they are 30 and then vote overwhelmingly for that party during the course of their lifetimes.

So ifa politician can “get them while they’re young,” they can have the loyalty of a voter throughout their careers and they will have delivered a voter to their party for life.

Today’s young undecided voter makes decisions from information he or she garners online. Perhaps that’s why government officials and political aspirants are moving online in droves all over the world. Besides, social media is a lot less expensive than TV advertising, which is greeted by most young voters with Teflon immunity.

The chapter reports on political social media campaigns in at least a half dozen countries and it digs in to the campaigns of John Edwards for US president as well as David Cameron, running for British Prime Minister. It also reports on the Farsi language blog of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who uses it to hurl accusations at

Israel

and the

US

and to establish himself as a leader of Muslim opponents while simultaneously suppressing dissenting bloggers among

Iran

’s citizenry.

By following voters online, the very nature of politics in itself changes. First, it significantly lowers the cost of communications allowing greater opportunity for aspirants who have not amassed huge war chests. Second, it allows voters to talk back (except maybe in

Iran

), letting politicians know what they feel in a very direct way.

7. The Bottom Up Democracy

With a population of just 1.4 million people,

Estonia

is second to the smallest country in the 27-member EU. It is also the world’s most connected country with free wifi access located no further apart than one square kilometer through most of the country.

Estonia

is unquestionably  the world’s most direct democracy. These facts are closely related. The country uses the Internet to collect taxes, conduct its elections and provides as many of its government services as is possible. A former prime minister says the purpose of the Internet is not to talk to the people but to listen to them, then simply give them what they want—for better or worse. He sees the day when the Estonian Parliament may be eliminated, letting the connected country vote directly on critical issues.

The result: over 90 percent of the people vote. Tax payers, never jubilant about the requirement, feel they are fairly treated and business people feel comfortable just dialing up government officials for a chat when they have an issue to discuss.

The chapter speculates on what other, larger democracies have to learn from the Estonian experience. It also looks at Skype and other startups and explains hpw connection has led to the country’s rapid emergence since turning focus to the west after the Soviet empire crumbled.

8. Crisis and the Instant Neighborhood

Social media seems to be at its best and most dramatic when natural disasters occur. This chapter tells the stories of how instant global neighborhoods formed after the catastrophes of the tsunami, Katrina, and the disappearance and deaths-- of two American journalists in the space of one year into unpopulated areas of the American Northwest. It talks to officials at Wells Fargo bank on why they are trying to become the go-to blogsite, whenever a natural disaster occurs in the

US

.

It examines how social media can be used to share information quickly and effectively and how in the future rescue operations can use social media as informational base camps.

 

9. The Global Start-Up

In the technology sector, the conventional wisdom is that

Silicon Valley

is the center of the universe. Maybe so, but that universe is expanding at a rapid rate and a great deal of interest is happening in historically unlikely places ranging from Montana to Ho Chi Minh City, Phuket, Tallinn and elsewhere.

This chapter looks at the trends toward decentralized global startups that are taking advantage of internet efficiencies to build global consumer marketing companies, often located in several countries, yet employing less than 20 people. Many of these startups are providing innovations in social media that are bolstering the growing strength of the global neighborhood.

It notes that the barriers to entry are quite low for these new companies but the barriers to exit are quite high. The chapter looks at the benefits and problems this poses to the startups, disrupted incumbents and end users.

10  Touch in the Neighborhood

Despite the revolution of social media, Global Neighborhoods notes that nothing helps a relationship more than an actual face-to-face meeting. And often better than online interaction is the spontaneity and audio subtleties of a telephone conversation.

This chapter looks at the cultural impact on low cost airlines and the new ultra low cost telephony providers. It spotlights RyanAir, a profitable airline that allows Europeans to travel internationally for as little as $30 while turning a tidy profit.

It examines the impact of Skype, the Estonian company that now carries 10 percent f the voice traffic between Europe and the

US

. It looks at myriad companies offering still less expensive voice connections and spotlights, Roam4Free an Irish company bringng extremely cheap telephony services to some of the least affluent of the world’s international callers—the immigrants workers.

The chapter looks at how these services are connecting more and more people to more and more places and speculates on how that is contributing to the fast emergence of new markets and the changes in local cultures to a more global perspective.

PART 2: The Issues

11.  Supertankers & factory towns

Big companies are not ignorant of the rapid changes being brought about by the social media revolution. They understand that marketing and advertising are becoming increasingly cost ineffective. But change systems that have been in place for decades in a multinational organization with thousand and thousands of employees is pretty much like trying to turn around a super tanker moving on open seas at full throttle.

It takes a lot of time and you travel a long distance before anything happens. At issue is the fact that power has shifted from large organizations into communities where their customers and prospects are found. In these new neighborhoods the most influential people are the most generous.

When large organizations—companies and government bodies approach online communities, they want to “own the inhabitants,” use the media as they used traditional media, to build awareness and enthusiasm for the company’s products and services.

The problem is that these result in little more than a company addressing a large user group with a blogged thrown into the marketing mix. It’s a top-down approach, a modern version of the old company town, where manufacturers owned every house, the general store, even the churches and schools.

To work, a big companies need to not try building a community, but to find the neighborhoods where their customers, prospects, employees and recruits hang out—then be generous to that community so that they can build trust.

This is difficult to do, requiring a whole new way of thinking. The book points to Hitachi Data Systems a division of one the world’s 100 largest companies. It turned to a 30-year-old, mid-level employee to become achieve leadership in a community to which it referred users to competitors and invited competitors to join the conversation.

12. The

Babel

Factor

Not only is language the most obvious barrier to all people in all places sharing words and ideas in global neighborhoods, it is also among the most persistent. The promise of computer translation software has been around for at least a decade longer than has the worldwide web. And while has improved, it still provides results that might best be described as goofy. This chapter discusses the implications.

It looks at the dilemma of entrepreneurs in non-English speaking countries. While English is the dominant language of the internet for now, it may not be the dominant language of where a person lives. Even if it is, there is work involved in localiztion of language that can get muddled in the global neighborhood. The chapter interviews at least two entrepreneurs—on Italian and the other Estonian that built significant local language communities then took decidedly different strategies to go beyond what they started.

It also examines the issue of emerging countries where English is not among the top languages and speculates on how that will impact global neighborhoods looking forward.

 

13. The Dark Side of the Neighborhood

A great many tangible neighborhoods have dangerous or unsavory sections. It’s no less true in global neighborhoods. There is a virtual Cold War going on between hoaxsters, spammers, camp joiners, elixir salesmen and worse groups that include hate mongers, terrorists and child predators. The better communities et at protecting themselves from these unwanted denizens, the more adept the bad guys seem to get at slithering in to them in search of innocent victims.

This chapter looks at several examples—some annoying and some disturbing and suggests cautions that visitors—and their parents—should consider.

 

PART 3: Into the future

14. Small steps for humankind

In Naked Conversations, the co-authors wrote that blogging was a tool, just like a hammer. A hammer can be used to either build or bludgeon.  This is true now to an even greater suite of tools, collectively called the social media.  Like blogging, the first of the toolset to become widely popularized, most people seem to be putting these tools to good use, and the book concludes that the evidence is overwhelming that this is the case of global neighborhoods.

It closes with a strong statement of faith in what the emerging generation will achieve in its collective lifetime.  It sees a world in which companies serve customer needs by talking with them up front and candidly; where politicians say what they like to do if elected and people tell them why they should follow that path or adjust course. It looks a generation beyond at children whose classroom instructors will take them via virtual reality to the scenes of history's greatest moments, to experience the views from the top of the Alps before glaciers receded.

It sees a great percentage of the world's people able to bypass intermediaries of government, media and marketing departments to communicate directly with each other.  It sees children of hostile nations preferring to compete on football fieds rather than battlefields.

Does Global Neighborhoods argue that what is happening today will bring about word peace? No, the book is not quite that optimistic. But it does conclude that global neighborhoods is one small step in the right direction for humankind.

 

 

 

Comments

[Peter Haslam]

I have to say that I enjoyed the way you gave me a whole new perspective in a single blog. I will look forward to following the conversations this will generate.

[Jim Turner]

Great job Shel! I'm especially interested in the issues related to how we communicate via applications such as Skype. This company has made me a global marketing consultant rather than the guy down the street selling his wares. I have clients from all parts of the globe and I am still amazed at how a person on the other side of the planet can carry on a business deal with me. It is truly a neighborhood I have moved into and have been welcomed.

[Justin Thorp]

Shel, the TOC looks great.

FYI - you may wanna take a look at what your blog looks like when you print it. I tried printing out the TOC but it comes out really funky. It probably could be fixed with a print style sheet[1].

[1] http://alistapart.com/articles/goingtoprint/

[shel israel]

Justin,

Believe it or not, I do not know how to do that. The good news is that what you see right now is just a place keeper. Josh Hallett, designer extraordinaire has volunteered to help me with a more professional look and better fiunctionality at the end of this month, which is before I actually start posting chapters.

[PaulSweeney]

You might like to check out www.bioteams.com and are recent interview that scoble did with bioteam's Ken Thompson on how biology effects our interactions, trusts, and teams. Loads of resources there. Also, have a read (if you haven't already) of Guns, Germs and Steel. Its a book that traces the evolution of societies. Its a mind blower. Finally, Gerry McGovern wrote a book called "The Caring Economy" oh way back in 2000 (sic ;)about some of these issues.

[Elizabeth Grigg]

Hey Shel.

The neighborhood metaphor makes a good handle but it can be a burden on the reader who might want to set the metaphor aside for a bit and get to the technical details. You could take it more lightly if you find there is content that doesn't quite fit the metaphor all the time.

Or you can go a completely different route and embrace the metaphor so thoroughly that it would no longer be a burden for the reader. (Meaning, there is nothing you would put in your book that would not fit the metaphor 100%). An example of going to that extreme would be using the schema of Christopher Alexander's "A Pattern Language" to structure your book. You would be describing the online examples of each of these interfaces and intimacies. In all cases you would bring the familiar structure to mind for the reader and draw its internet parallel. Such as, the front porch, the city square, the verandah, etc. Practically writes itself ;)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Pattern_Language

[FrankB]

Hi Shel,

I finally got around to thinking about the TOC. One though in advance about the process. This wasn’t exactly easy to digest. Maybe it could be useful to post smaller chunks that don’t require one big commitment of time.

PART ONE: What’s Happening
1. … The more we remain the same

I love this chapter and the idea ;-)

2. The virtual megalopolis

From the content point of view fine as well. Even though it may not be of interest I just mention that you start two paragraphs with “From there”…

3. Social Media—a guided tour

Sounds interesting, too!

4. Forget the crystal ball. Look at the kids.
The chapter takes a look at how the world is likely to change as this generation enters the marketplace and an older one leaves it.

Now this might be a controversial point. Does the older generation leave the marketplace? Well it will at some point we call death, but I feel that you don’t credit “your” generation enough ;-) More and more old people are getting into the online world, too. My mother is just one example. She’s now 60 years old and some five years ago taught everything computers and internet herself. Now she is doing some stuff on and off that I can’t do without researching first. Maybe you should take a look at how at least a part of an older generation is adapting to the new world as well. Might make it a bit more balanced. Right now this sounds like the young generation will be the savior of humankind (yes this is exaggerated :-)).

5. The Global Classroom
6. Politicians in Pursuit
7. The Bottom Up Democracy
8. Crisis and the Instant Neighborhood
9. The Global Start-Up
10 Touch in the Neighborhood

All chapters fine as far as my thoughts are advanced on this.

PART 2: The Issues
11. Supertankers & factory towns

Great chapter IMO!

12. The Babel Factor
And while has improved, it still provides results that might best be described as goofy.

Should you ever want a translation of a machine translated text (English->German) back into English let me know. I assure you goofy is in 90% of all cases much too friendly a word.

13. The Dark Side of the Neighborhood
Nothing to add here ;-)

PART 3: Into the future
14. Small steps for humankind

Sounds ok, too. Won’t comment on it before seeing the actual chapter.

Conclusion:
I like the single chapters as standalones, but somehow it feels to me as if much of the content is somewhat unrelated and isn't tied up enough. I thought long about including this criticism as I have no suggestion for solving it but decided to do it anyways. I believe that some means is necessary to weld it all together. Maybe a transitional piece between chapters could solve this.
And the names of the PARTS could be a bit more inspiring. Maybe you can use these to connect chapters and parts better, too.

That’s all I can think of for now. Hope this helps
Cheers
Frank

[ZOverLord]

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