You have to find some way to protect your own users from scale. This doesn't mean the scale of the whole system can't grow. But you can't try to make the system large by taking individual conversations and blowing them up like a balloon; human interaction, many to many interaction, doesn't blow up like a balloon. It either dissipates, or turns into broadcast, or collapses. So plan for dealing with scale in advance, because it's going to happen anyway.

»In Open Space meetings, events and organizations, participants create and manage their own agenda of parallel working sessions around a central theme of strategic importance, such as: What is the strategy, group, organization or community that all stakeholders can support and work together to create?

With groups of 5 to 1000 -- working in one-day workshops, three-day conferences, or the regular weekly staff meeting -- the common result is a powerful, effective connecting and strengthening of what's already happening in the organization: planning and action, learning and doing, passion and responsibility, participation and performance.«

Auch Esther Dyson hatte vor einiger Zeit einmal über einen ähnlichen Versuch berichtet während einer Konferenz. Sie konstatiert, dass sich neben der realen Situation eine zweite Konferenz ausgebildet hätte, die mit der ersten interagiert.

Voraussetzung für beide Versuche waren WirelessLAN-Zugänge, so dass die Teilnehmer zugleich Zuhörer und Diskutant sein konnten.

Eine interessante Studie zum Gebrauch von Instant Messaging im Arbeitskontext, von der einfachen Kontaktaufnahme bis zur intensiven Zusammenarbeit.

Two contrasting schools of cyberthought offer explanations for what's happening. Optimists regard the World Wide Web and e-mail as realms for making and keeping friends, joining global communities, and exchanging ideas freely outside the bounds of oppressive government restrictions. Pessimists argue that online endeavors pull people away from real-world interactions, make them less concerned about their communities, and provide a forum for hate groups. They also charge that the Internet creates unprecedented opportunities for governments to monitor citizens' private lives.

One of the most interesting talks at the Etech conference was Clay Shirky's presentation on the User Patterns on LiveJournal. In it, he noted that on LiveJournal, people tend to tightly cluster into small groups which are themselves more loosely clustered into larger groups (and so on). When he studied this data, he found that groups of ~12 people are different than smaller or larger groups. There's a satisfying user experience that happens at that size: the group is big enough to have a variety of viewpoints and opinions but small enough so that everyone knows each other fairly well.

Nettime ist eine der ältesten und einflussreichsten netzkritischen Mailinglisten. Und ein Paradebeispiel für neue Kommunikationsformen im Internet.

(bezogen aus dem Information Mapping Seminar)

The era of the destination website is over. The time of the participation site is about to arrive. [...] The applications that have really worked on the internet are tools that allow people to do something for themselves, often through peer-to-peer communication, networking and transactions: e-mail, file sharing programmes like Napster, bulletin boards, mass open auctions.

This paper introduces the concept of distributed constructionism, building on previous research on constructionism and on distributed cognition. It focuses particularly on the use of computer networks to support students working together on design and construction activities, and it argues that these types of activities are particularly effective in supporting the development of knowledge-building communities. The paper describes three main categories of distributed constructionist activities: discussing constructions, sharing constructions, and collaborating on constructions. In each category, it describes ongoing research projects at the MIT Media Lab and discusses how these projects support new ways of thinking and learning.

The point of an argument is to give reasons in support of some conclusion. An argument commits a fallacy when the reasons offered do not support the conclusion.

While the weblogs amplify the spread of ideas by quoting them in several generations, they fragment the discussions and thinking about these ideas. It's like weblogs facilitates and kills discussions at the same time. The second effect is working against the first.

This paper deals with "Napster Music Community," a program that connects 60 million of music fans and enables them to exchange music files. The main hypothesis is that Napster is an example of an imagined and network community. The first section of the paper gives a theoretical background to the problems addressed: the notions of community and network, the concepts of imagined and network community, as well as the debate on virtual communities are extensively discussed there. Pundits such as Ferdinand Tönnies, Emile Durkheim, Benedict Anderson, Barry Wellman, Morris Janowitz, Robert Putnam and others are consulted. The third part of this paper consist firstly of an analysis of the Napster software that aims at demonstrating the structure for the actors to interact within, and secondly addresses 14 variables that have been distinguished as descriptive of an imagined and network community. In conclusion several implications from the research are drawn.

There are three sets of factors, deeply interrelated: Attitudinal Factors, Interpersonal Factors, Group Identity Factors

Functional theories look at how groups achieve their tasks.

Interactional theories look closely at the human relations that are central to group processes.

Structuration theory provides a model which most fully accounts for context, for differences in groups and in the problems addressed, and for the interaction of task and relationship functions.

J. A. Simon schreibt in seinem Beitrag im Archiv von Telepolis über vernetzte Kommunikation + Kollaboration, Superbeobachter + Nutzerperspektive in Bezug auf klassische und neue Ansätze von Kommunikationsmodellen. Ich fand den (trotz seines Alters von 4 Jahren aktuellen) Text sehr interessant, da Simon im Verlauf seiner Abhandlung viele grundsätzliche Thesen + Theorien durchforstet.