Knowledge workers requiring new publics
Danah Boyd is probably my favorite social networks researcher. She’s produced some formidable research and is one of the leading thinkers on social networks and the online youth culture. Here’s an interesting quote of hers in which she explains why social networking has captured the imagination of so many teenagers.
“Publics offer youth a space to engage in cultural identity development. By engaging in public life, youth learn to interpret the cultural signals that surround them and incorporate these cultural elements into their life. For a diverse array of reasons, contemporary youth have limited access to the types of publics with which most adults grew up. As a substitute for these inaccessible publics, networked publics like MySpace and Facebook are emerging to provide contemporary American youth with a necessary site for peer engagement.â
The critical question is what about us in the workplace? Do we have a shortage of “publics” in which to interact with one another? Traditionally conferences served as our publics. But our industries have gotten so fragmented that we need to attend several in a year to keep pace with our fields. Unfortunately, carving out the time or the dollars for this is often difficult. Also, with Internet time affecting every industry, attending conferences a few times a year don’t provide the immediacy and intensity of engagement that we now need. Maybe that’s why more companies are gravitating to online communities like LinkedIn and Facebook. We too are having to create new online publics!
