I’ve been playing with this idea for a long time and it’s far from having any definite shape, but, as usual, writing about it should help. [This post is another round of thinking on What a coffee corner provides, how to call it and a research agenda and an attempt to integrate bits of thinking that I don't have a name for, but tagged PAT for a time being.]

The “problem” line:

• in many of the professional activities sharing physical space is an essential ingredient
• shared space provides opportunities for various types of interactions – goal-oriented ones, but also informal, unstructured and those that we probably wouldn’t even call interactions – like observing or overhearing others
  • non-goal-oriented interactions are essential for the things that create a foundation for working together (and goal-oriented interactions) – common ground – developing shared understanding and building relationships
• when work moves into a technology-mediated realm, things start to break
  • non-goal-oriented interactions tend to disappear
  • where existed, common ground shrinks; new teams get into problems of establishing it
  • goal-oriented interactions weaken

In this case we tend to think of f2f as a solution, but it’s very resource-intensive and is not always feasible. So, I’m looking at how the effects of “being there together” could be achieved in a technology-mediated way.

There seem to be several essential ingredients for it:

• a shared space that provides
• excuses to be there that are not necessarily involve working towards a shared goal or being intentionally social,
• opportunities to see what’s going on and to be seen in a non-intrusive way,
• easy switching between inward- and outward-oriented activities.

[This list is heavily based on the ideas about conditions for emergent social activities in urban public spaces from Life between buildings by Jan Gehl. I also used similar terms to explain how weblogs support relationship-building across boundaries, see Blog as an edge zone.]

Now to what I believe is at the core of it: tools to support sharing, observing and interacting around presence and activity traces. Think of instant messaging, (micro)blogging, social networks:

• while to various degrees those tools support communication, all of them make it acceptable or even essential to broadcast various statuses and update
• seeing those updates from others is often similar to observing them in a physical space (Lilia is here/awake/recovering from a flu/thinking about presence and activity traces), reinforcing the feeling of being connected and finding where ideas coming from different people overlap
• updates might trigger interactions, that take relationship building and developing shared understanding further

So, that would be an alternative/additional to f2f way of “being there together”. That’s said there is lots of unanswered questions around it. For example:

• The balance between manual and automatic updates. Manual updates take effort, but they are likely to be more relevant for others (partly because the effort that goes into it signifies the importance); not everyone wants to/has time to blog or twitter. Automatic updates are easy, but we can easily get overloaded with irrelevant stuff and they raise lots of privacy issues.
• Number of channels and critical mass of relevant others. There is way too many tools already that work around presence and activity traces, creating a whole “how do I manage my presence and activity in all those places” issue. At the same time, to use them as a reliable substitution of f2f encounters all the right people have to be there (ideally in the same channel), which hard to expect.
• F2f spaces are organised around specific contexts (meeting, shared office, coffee corner, home, sport club, etc.) and moving between those physically correspond to switching between various types of activities and people associated with those activities. This is possible in a technology-mediated way, but not easy and natural, since in the most cases it requires a range of strategies and additional activities to make that work (e.g. LinkedIn for work and Facebook for friends, switching Twitter client off when focusing on getting things done, etc.).

And now I’m off for dinner wondering how much all of this makes sense :)))

• Distributed Agile: communication and common ground
• Edges
• PhD writing done, future workspaces and blogging

It feels strange now, almost at the end of my PhD work, to come back to the themes and topics from the beginning of it. Like a few weeks ago, when the post by Jack Vinson brought back the metaphor of a weblog as a front porch from the discussions in 2004.

I’ve been playing with city-related metaphors for a long time, heavily inspired by the book by Danish architect Jan Gehl “Life between buildings“. Now I tie together multiple fragments of it in a final chapter of my dissertation, using it to explain the ‘front porch’ nature of blogging and its impact for emergent social processes. Below is a piece from the current draft…

***

As the findings of this dissertation illustrate, blogging supports creating relations with unknown and unexpected others, often across various boundaries. It starts from being present as a blogger, finding and observing others; then possibly engaging in an interaction that might grow into a relation. In his study of social activities in urban places Jan Gehl (2001) describes relations in similar way starting from “see and hear contacts” that might eventually grow into a closer relation. In analysing the conditions for those contacts and for emergent interaction in public spaces in a city he stresses the importance of edge zones:

At the edge of the forest or near the façade, one is less exposed than if one is out in the middle of a space. One is not in the way of anyone or anything. One can see, but not be seen too much, and the personal territory is reduced to a semicircle in front of the individual. When one’s back is protected, others can approach only frontally, making it easy to keep watch and to react, for example, by means of a forbidding facial expression in the event of undesired invasion of personal territory.

The edge zone offers a number of obvious practical and psychological advantages as a place to linger. Additionally, the area along the façade is the obvious outdoor staying area for the residents and functions of the surrounding buildings. It is relatively easy to move a function out of the house to the zone along the façade. The most natural place to linger is the doorstep, from which it is possible to go farther out into the space or remain standing. Both physically and psychologically it is easier to remain standing than to move out into the space. One can always move farther later on, if desired (Gehl, 2001, pp. 151-152).

Weblogs are similar to the edge zones in cities. As a personal space in public a weblog provides a unique opportunity for combining the characteristics of both – being in control and feeling protected in one’s own space (Gumbrecht, 2004) and being exposed to others and open for a communication.

Drawing parallels between blogging and social life in cities allows identifying several conditions for emergent social activities in a case of weblogs. One, mentioned above, is personal control and safety, providing an opportunity to “linger” comfortably in public. Other conditions include: a legitimate reason to be in public, an opportunity to see and be seen, and switching between inward- and outward-oriented activities.

Edge zones often provide one with a legitimate reason to be in public as long as one wants to without necessarily doing anything ‘social’ – for example, having a coffee or reading a book in a front garden of one’s house. In this context Jan Gehl also talks about “excursions as excuses” (2001, pp. 117-119), describing a number of observations indicating that some activity meaningful for a person appears to be a pretext or an occasion for social contact:

Among the requirements that are satisfied, in part, in public spaces are the need for contact, the need for knowledge, and the need for stimulation. These belong to the group of psychological needs. Satisfying these is seldom as goal-oriented and deliberate as with the more basic physical needs, such as eating, drinking, sleeping and so on. For example, adults seldom go to town with the expressed intention of satisfying the need for stimulation or the need for contact. Regardless of the true purpose may be, one goes out for a plausible, rational reason – to shop, to take a walk, to get some fresh air, to buy a paper, to wash the car, and so forth (Gehl, 2001, p. 117).

Blogging can support various personal activities that do not require interaction. One can always think of a weblog in terms of conversations with self or publishing: blogging as “writing for myself”, “publishing to the world” or “learning from others” provides an excuse to linger in public.

Being in public in a city implies that one has an opportunity to see what’s going on and to be seen, without a necessity to interact. In a case of weblogs “seeing” is reading, made more efficient by news aggregators and various notification services that allow bloggers to keep track of interesting things happening. Writing a weblog makes its author present in a blogosphere and visible to others. This visibility provides an opportunity for low-intensity contacts, exposure and lurking that do not require the commitment and effort of an interaction, but create starting points for more intensive engagement.

Finally, to be able to engage with others further one needs an opportunity to switch easily between inward- and outward-oriented activities, those personally meaningful and those engaging others, for example, by stopping to talk with a friend met on a street. With weblogs it is about switching modes: what started as publishing or conversation with self can turn into an interaction when others comment or link to a weblog post. As a conversation in a middle of a street, interacting via weblogs is not the most convenient way to talk, however, it is spontaneous and easy to move in a more appropriate space if there is a need for it or to stop if one is in a hurry.

As an edge zone as weblog provides a personal space in public. Although there is the pressure of social norms and perceived expectations of one’s audience, the personal nature of blogging means that there is still more freedom in what to write and how to do it than in many other online spaces, which are often guided by topical focus or reinforced group practices. Blogging can also be more open-ended and less focused on an interaction with specific others, for example, writing email with ‘an interesting idea that you might be able to comment on’ to all acquaintances would be rude, while a weblog provides a natural space for it. However, at the same time weblog is a form of communication aimed at others – like being in public reveals one’s personality through exposing appearance and actions, writing a weblog exposes the author’s values and way of thinking through the style of writing and choices about content.

• Distributed Agile: communication and common ground
• Shrunken communication in distributed teams (the egg of communication :)
• Fun of book reading…

A little side-trip before I get back to work. Two quotes from two books; something I has been playing with for a long time, but still has to find a proper way into my formal research writing.

Jan Gehl, Life between buildings, on ‘excursions as excuses’:

Among the requirements that are satisfied, in part, in public spaces are the need for contact, the need for knowledge, and the need for stimulation. These belong to the group of psychological needs. Satisfying these is seldom as goal-oriented and deliberate as with the more basic physical needs, such as eating, drinking, sleeping and so on. For example, adults seldom go to town with the expressed intention of satisfying the need for stimulation or the need for contact. Regardless of the true purpose may be, one goes out for a plausible, rational reason – to shop, to take a walk, to get some fresh air, to buy a paper, to wash the car, and so forth.

Perhaps it is wrong to speak of the shopping excursion as a pretext for contact and stimulation, because very few people out shopping will accept the fact that the need for contact and stimulation plays any part in their shopping plans. The fact that adults who work at home on average spend nearly three times as much time shopping as those who work outside the home, and the fact that the shopping excursions are distributed evenly throughout the week, even though shopping once a week would perhaps be easier, make it natural to assume that the many daily shopping excursions are not only a question of getting supplies.

It is general characteristic that basic physical and psychological needs are satisfied at the same time, and that the basic and easily defined needs often serve to explain and motivate the satisfying of both sets of needs. In this context the shopping excursion is both a shopping trip and a pretext, or occasion, for contact and stimulation. [pp. 117, 119]

Kate Fox, Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour, on ‘props and facilitators’:

The English constantly form clubs and societies for exactly the same reason that we have so many sports and games: we need props and facilitators to help us engage socially with our fellow humans, to overcome our social dis-ease, and we also need an illusion that we are doing something else, that we have come together for some practical purpose, to pursue a specific shared interest, to pool resources in order to achieve something we couldn’t manage alone. […] the real purpose of all these clubs is the social contact and social bonding that we desperately need, but cannot admit needing, not even to ourselves. [p. 251]

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2006/10/05.html#a1840; comments are here.

• On the role of theory
• Now I’m blogging in Russian: Edges
• Individual in a public space: learning from weblogs and cities

I’m in the middle of writing deadlines, so just a piece from Life between buildings that was hanging in my blogging notes for ages:

At the edge of the forest or near the façade, once is less exposed than if one is out in the middle of a space. One is not in the way of anyone or anything. One can see, but not be seen too much, and the personal territory is reduced to a semicircle in front of the individual. When one’s back is protected, others can approach only frontally, making it easy to keep watch and to react, for example, by means of a forbidding facial expressions in the event of undesired invasion of personal territory.

The edge zone offers a number of obvious practical and psychological advantages as a place to linger. Additionally, the area along the façade is the obvious outdoor staying area for the residents and functions of the surrounding buildings. It is relatively easy to move a function out of the house to the zone along the façade. The most natural place to linger is the doorstep, from which it is possible to go farther out into the space or remain standing. Both physically and psychologically it is easier to remain standing than to move out into the space. One can always more farther later on, if desired.

It can be concluded that events grow from inward, from the edge toward the middle of public spaces.

When I read this one as a well as lots of examples of places people choose for hanging out in public, it becomes clear that the edge between purely personal and private “my” space and truly social “our” space is important. This is the space for observing, making choices and getting ready to step out into social engagement. This is also the space in between that is so often missing or neglected. I’m thinking of “old” technologies that support either you personally (all stuff that runs on the desktop) or what ever group with shared activity (all kinds of groupware stuff). Being there just to observe before jumping in is lurking and often it’s not considered to be a good behaviour…

I guess it’s a bit cryptic, but if you read me long enough you probably able to connect the dots. Otherwise just wait till words around ideas mature and mould into something readable…

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2005/06/03.html#a1580; comments are here.

• Shrunken communication in distributed teams (the egg of communication :)
• Papers on connections between cyberspace and real cities
• Blog networking study: publishing vs. interaction

A slightly edited/linked piece from my proposal for Microsoft Research Social Computing Symposium 2005 (and I’m very excited to be invited :) I have been planning to write a proper weblog post around bullet points at the end, but it’s not happenning fast, so I just post it as it is and come back to it later.

Although weblogs are perceived as low-threshold tools to publish on-line, empowering individual expression in public, there is growing evidence of social structures evolving around weblogs and their influence on norms and practices of blogging. This evidence ranges from voices of bloggers themselves speaking about the social effects of blogging, to studies on specific weblog communities with distinct cultures (e.g. knitting community or goth community), to mathematical analysis of links between weblogs indicating that community formation in the blogosphere is not a random process, but an indication of shared interests binding bloggers together (Kumar, Novak, Raghaven, & Tomkins, 2003).

Social structures emerging around weblogs are interesting for a number of reasons. Weblogs provide spaces for both individual expression and control, and interactions within social ecosystem; hence providing insights of interplays between practices of networked individuals (Wellman, 2002, .pdf) and social structures where those individuals belong. While some weblog communities mirror existing social structures, others emerge when strangers find each other and connect. Weblogs do not provide a shared space with central topic or activity to be attracted to, nor (often) pre-existing community, but do support emergent social connections.

The nature of those connections is especially interesting, since understanding them can help to design environments to support emergence of social structures without predefining their focus or membership. From this perspective blogging is similar to “life between buildings” in a real city that “an opportunity to be with others in a relaxed and undemanding way”. This quote comes from architect Jan Gehl (2001) who discusses how to design public spaces that welcome and support social life.

While reading Gehl’s work I couldn’t avoid associations with insights about “individual in a public space” from my own research (I study uses and effects of blogging for personal knowledge management). I’d like to draw on parallels between real cities and the world of blogging and propose characteristics of a space that supports emergent social activities:

• comfortable, protected space
• conditions for longer-term activities meaningful for an individual
• “soft-edges”, easy switch between inward and outward oriented activities
• opportunities for low-intensity contact: exposure and lurking without a commitment
• “shared space” in between, to move social activity when it grows

These characteristics could be illustrated with examples from other social software applications (del.icio.us, Flickr, etc.) next to weblogs, so I guess they provide a good start for a discussion.

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2005/03/18.html#a1526; comments are here.

• Being there together via presence and activity traces
• BlogWalk Seattle: people
• Distributed Agile: communication and common ground

There is so much fun in opening a long wanted book after finding the only place it could be ordered and patiently waiting for it to arrive. Fun of waking up and heading for it, before everything. Fun of taking time to read knowing that it would be a long day with lots of things to do. Fun of discovery, nodding at every other page – “ah, true..” – and stopping for a minute thinking all about all those association with your own work…

Of course, sometimes it’s nice to start a day from the blogosphere news, hot and exciting, but somehow this couldn’t beat the fun of reading a well-written book that travelled over five editions and thirty-something years.

And – in case you are curious – the book is Life between buildings by Jan Gehl. It’s part of my reading about cities and thinking about life between weblogs.

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2005/02/20.html#a1498; comments are here.

• On the role of theory
• Swiss Pattada
• Edges

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

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2004/11/15.html#a1429; comments are here.

• Wish I was there: Weblogs and Cross-Disciplinary Communication panel
• Learning in the rain
• Learning from Jill’s PhD journey