Wednesday February 23, 2022; 12:59 PM EST
- Fifteen or twenty years ago it was commonly understood that a community of bloggers with a shared interest acted like a team of screeners. When anything was written and published that mattered to fans of their shared topic, one or two of them would notice, skim or read deeply, comment shallowly or thoughtfully about it, link to it, and spread the word in the community. If the thing was really promising, a second wave of readers would build on the early notices with further thoughts of their own. There would be arguments of fact and interpretation, and the new item would begin to enter the tested and perhaps taken-for-granted contents of the community's hive mind. It might very well be improved in the process. [Because it was the web, the participants might or might not have done anything out in the world with what they'd discovered.]#
- Ingredients:#
- A community of people with a shared interest, and the tools to communicate with each other and recognize their commonalities#
- Habits of reading and writing and posting in public#
- Ways to disseminate those writings quickly and widely#
- A shared custom of reflection and commentary (a kind of thinking together) #
- Ways, once again, to disseminate those writings quickly and widely#
- Some way of beginning to translate the thinking-together into actions, which are ideas tried and tested in the world#
- Writing up the results, beginning the cycle again#
- In the process, the cycle, people enjoy the pleasures and challenges of commitment--to their beloved topic, to their colleagues who share the topic, and to the process of thinking together, testing, and improving something from their topic in the real world.#
- The benefits might be personal, professional, or social/political. I might become a better stamp collector, we might become teachers, our group might become potent activists on our issue. Some kinds of tools are involved, certain habits of mind, certain social habits and affiliations.#
- On a good day, people enjoy these shared commitments and feel themselves growing through them. On a bad day, in a bad year or decade or century, they may feel that these creative and liberating commitments are denied them. They may then be entitled to any bitterness that they learn from others or that bubbles up inside.#