Mathemagenic

A piece from the paper:

An individual weblog is not likely to represent a community, while shared social spaces seem to emerge between weblogs, like in a city where life between buildings accounts for many social activities of its inhabitants. As in cities, blogger communal spaces are not evenly distributed: some neighbourhoods are full of social activities and conversations, while others look like a random collocation of houses where inhabitants have nothing in common. Blogger communal spaces may have visible boundaries, but more often indicators of a community are subtle and is difficult for a non-member to distinguish. Just as a local garden is not likely to have a sign indicating that there is a chess-player community that inhabits it every Sunday, blog communities do not delineate obvious community boundaries.

Somehow city metaphor was hitting me hard during last half a year...

I guess it's started from A city is not a tree. Then it was reading Emergence and talkings about communities, shared spaces and weblog reading at BlogWalk 2.0, Ton's post on founding a City in Cyberspace, Torill's Dialogue in slow motion at BlogTalk.

And a post by Anna Vallgårda pointing to Life between buildings by Jan Gehl... Just a quote from this book:

Life between buildings offers an opportunity to be with others in a relaxed and undemanding way. One can take occasional walks, perhaps make a detour along a main street on the way home or pause at an inviting bench near a front door to be among people for a short while. One can take a long bus ride every day, as many retired people have been found to do in large cities. Or one can do daily shopping, even though it practical to do it once a week. Even looking out of the window now and then, if one is fortunate enough to have something to look at, can be rewarding. Being among others, seeing and hearing others, receiving impulses from others, imply positive experiences, alternatives to being alone. One is not necessarily with a specific person, but one is, nevertheless, with others.

As opposed to being a passive observer of other people's experiences on television or video or film, in public spaces the individual himself is present, participating in a modest way, but most definitely participating.

And it's got connected with lurking, degrees of strength in relation building and some others things that I can't articulate yet...

This post also appears on channel BlogWalk

That was tough. Rare case of hardly blogging during working on the paper :)

Anyway, we finished it. The paper title is "In search for a virtual settlement: An exploration of weblog community boundaries" and it is started from a conversation at BlogWalk 3.0 in Vienna.

I guess we'll publish the draft or at least some pieces - I'm too fascinated with the topic to keep it quiet (actually, some of it was blogged by Denham - nice example of backchanneling that travels back to blogs :).

And the best part of it is not about finishing the paper and even not about getting new insights on the topic, but about getting to know Stephanie, going together through stress and fun, ups and downs, personal and work... Steph, thanks for the great company :)