Neighbornode
This thing about global and local wakes me up at night. The contradictions created by our ability to connect with anyone on an internet connection across the world and yet forget our local 'hood always strikes me as some sort of societal indicator. Now we have more and more work done to help us connect electronically with our neighbors. I love it and at the same time am a bit repulsed. Am I hiding from my own addiction?
Neighbornode Explained: "Why Neighbornode:Neigbornode was developed because the Internet, while really good at connecting people half-way around the world, is really bad at connecting people who live across the street from each other (or a block from each other, or two blocks from each other). This can be liberating on one hand, but there are still lots of advantages to be gained by sharing information locally and opening lines of communication with others in your immediate area. The Internet for the most part has not cashed in on these advantages. Neighbornode addresses this issue by creating spaces for people in the same area to communicate easily with one another via the Internet, and by then building these separate spaces into a network, so that information can travel between locales as residents of those areas see fit. In this way, Neighbornode bridges the gap between the Internet and the neighborhood. "
[via Robin Good]
posted by Nancy White at 2:30 PM
11 Comments:
10.9.8.7.6.5.4.3.2.1
Okay, I tried, I just can't contain myself. *g*
I'm not sure how limiting access to a wireless node and passively presenting an interstitial message board before breezing off to the broader WWW significantly increases our connection to our neighbors. Though I would imagine the very act of trying to advertise the fact that a neighbornode exists in a particular area *would* be a step towards connecting neighbors. Perhaps even neighbors without wifi or even computers.
Ironic, innit?
I feel like I'm braving Scott's wrath but I think the Neighboornode idea is significant. We're doing something like it at IleSansFil (a wireless community group in Montreal). The portal pages for each of our nodes are unique. Also, each one can grab (and display) different RSS feeds. So when we set up a cafe or an individual with a hotspot, we can also get an RSS feed from their blog. Not world-shattering, but I think it does connect people.
mike
http://mtl3p.ilesansfil.org
http://www.ilesansfil.org
It's a funny thing but global technology has actually increased my local neighbourhood connections. I keep a blog and neighbours and work colleagues comment on my postings when I see them on the street or in the corridor. We engage in conversations about local and national politics of a type which I never had before. Talking to neighbours while walking my dog has become a different event to the days before I kept a blog!!
No wrath at all, Mike. If my comment sounded harsh, it was a reaction to the over-simplification of what the Internet is good or bad. It smacked of "build it and they will come" optimism and an idealism regarding technology solving social problems.
I happen to live in an area where neighbor's don't tend to interact and, despite being in the SF Bay Area, are not well wired, much less wireless. I also work with an online community that tend to be on the lower end of the technology tail (consumers who buy one computer and see no need to upgrade for 5-7 years). So I have a tendency to view the use of technology within a context.
Some of my reaction was based on the limited use of nodes (only one node name per geographic location) and what seemed a lack of trying to use community groups or establish community gathering spots as a locus for connecting people. Looking over Île Sans Fil, it's clear that you are working on the context for the wifi technology--cafes, stores and community organizations. It sounds like you are taking the extra steps I think Neighbornode could also take.
This fantastic spate of comments has me thinking again about my neighborhood. We are not a particularly wired group as far as I can tell, but we all have email addresses. I've toyed with the idea of providing a wireless access point. But I haven't quite enough confidence that I want to serve as tech support. ;-)
Our block watch shares emails, but we've never started a list. I don't think anyone in my neighborhood knows I have a blog and I don't know of any bloggers on my block. There is a Seattle Bloggers group (http://seablogs.hellbent.org/) I used to be able to scope out proximate bloggers via http://geourl.org/ but it is down for repairs (?)
I'm intrigued at how this has me looking at my neighborhood (and my role in it) differently.
thanks for the feedback, scott. Although I've dedicated the last year and a half to ilesansfil, I'm more often excited about cms's and using rss feeds to construct community portals for areas that don't have strong social cohesion. Wifi/ilesansfil can be looked at as just a way to collect that community relevant information which can then be grouped for an area into a kind of self-sustaing community newspaper.
This seems to be the next GeoURL - http://www.a2b.cc/index.a2b
Because Net connectivity was so sparse, it was normal that we didn't connect based on geography. As it grows denser I expect to see lots more local connections. In Montreal, the YULblog scene seems to be expanding to a decent size, for instance. (http://yulblog.org)
You know about http://www.seattlewireless.net/ ?
Last thought, if everyone's got emails, first thing to do might be to create a Google Group and start sending out good links likely get people interested in increasing their presence online.
I don't understand that last idea, Seb? We all have emails, so we should what?
I meant, if you've got a loosely knit group you're trying to pull together online, and they're not webheads like you and I and Nancy, putting up a web-based community will most likely fail because people won't return to the website, will forget their password, etc., so an email group is probably the first thing to build.
The french still have proxyblog to give neighboors:
http://blogomath.sur-la-toile.com/proxyblog.php
I've been drawn into this question by mike at isf...and can attest to the community-building aspect of blogs & web and tools like delicious. i am a neophyte, not at all a tech-head, but it seems to me that the baby internet--which was hard to get at and not particularly social for the majority of non-tech people--has suddenly explopded into a gangly teenager about to become an adult. everything is getting easier, and the potential of connection -- accross the world and near to home -- seems so much easier.
I have a brand-spankin new blog (www.dosemagazine.blogspot.com), and rss feeds coming in to my browser from a number of montreal-based bloggers has allowed me to join a community here that seems to be moving in all sorts of interesting directions. and certainly as a community.
as access gets easier and easier, a wider social network is going to develop, and the technologies will evolve in ways we can't yet imagine. hmmm.
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