Communities Like Never Seen Before

To see the extent of ongoing social changes we have to understand the internet's effect on the structure of our society. Interaction between each other as a common action was geographically limited before the world wide web, but in the last two decades these 'walls' suddenly fell down. This must be one of the greatest shifts in our history, and we've just started to find out how to handle it. 

Social implications of new technology have a certain delay; by the words of Clay Shirky: 'at the moment when techology becomes boring, the social effects bocome interesting'. And to be honest it's only 4 years ago that web 2.0 was first mentioned.

In the next few years, the spotlight will slowly move on communities. In 2006 it was an interesting fact if Myspace were a country, then it would be the 11th largest of the world. Now it would be the 5th, head to head with the 5 years old Facebook. Try to predict the next 5 years!

These communities are not the same as they were in the past. Now they have the tools to act perfectly together without an actual leader being virtually anywhere in the world. Organizing lagre communities in the past was impossible without an enormous institution, but now it takes technically no costs and no time to create and manage an ad-hoc group.

Creation of communities were mainly driven by location and just secondly by interest, but now the balance is moving towards common likes, thoughts, feelings... etc. Just 15 years ago it would be hard to manage a group such as spinach haters; now you just have to start a group on Facebook, and wait for others to join from all around the world. 

Two-way discussions could only take place at in person meetings, not to mention decision making. In contrast today you can participate as many communities as you would like and contribute as much as you want.

This new kind of interaction forces us to rethink our society and rethink ourselves.