Jon Udell: Social capital, trust, and the purposes of online community

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Updated: 8/6/2002; 12:29:21 AM.

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Friday, April 05, 2002

Social capital, trust, and the purposes of online community

Robert Putnam's data on social capital show that social connectedness in America was on the rise through most of the last century, until its precipitous decline beginning in the late 1960s. Why the decline? He blames television, urban redevelopment, single-parent households, two-career families, and other factors.

An equally interesting question: why the rise that preceded the decline? Putnam suggests that 100 years ago, there was a crisis of social connectedness like the one we are in now. Migration of agricultural workers to the industrial cities, and of European immigrants to America, badly disrupted social networks. In response, Americans invented social institutions -- bridge clubs, bowling leagues, men's and women's social clubs, the 4H (a government creation, in fact) -- and proceeded to join them at an increasing rate, until the trend suddenly reversed in the late 60s.

These once-popular social institutions were created, Putnam suggests, by people who sensed, or knew, that there was a critical deficiency of social capital. The institutions were designed to correct that deficiency.

If he's right, the flowering of online community that we see all around us may be part of a very large historical pattern. As a culture, we may be sensing a deficiency of social capital, and creating new institutions -- appropriate to our time and our technology -- to remedy the problem. Putnam's thesis may be read as a requirements specification for online communities.

A corollary to the sharp decline of social capital in our generation, by the way, is a sharp rise in the number of lawyers per capita. Fifty years ago, Americans thought that most people were trustworthy. Today most think the reverse. Lawyering flourishes, says Putnam, because it is the "production and sale of synthetic trust."

Interesting. For years I have interacted online with people I have never met face-to-face, and may never meet. Yet I trust them.
8:12:37 PM

Social capital, bonding, and bridging

I attended a talk tonight by Robert Putnam, author of Bowling Alone, a study of the sharp decline of social capital over the last 30 years. The decline is measured as a loss of connectedness: people less willing to join organizations, to be civically involved, even to entertain friends at home.

When I read the book some months back, I wondered whether Putnam believes online community can help reverse the trend. Yes and no, it turns out. Although he doesn't seem deeply wired into online community, he made some interesting points about the Internet and social connectedness.

Face-to-face contact. Putnam's research shows that joining just one organization cuts your risk of dying, within the next year, by as much as quitting smoking. Social isolation is a huge health risk. Online community, for all its benefits and pleasures, is a poor substitute for face-to-face interaction. I greatly enjoy virtual society, but it doesn't do much for my blood chemistry. To what degree will telepresence make online social life feel more like mammalian social life? It will be fascinating to watch this unfold as storage, bandwidth, and CPU proceed on their current trajectories.

Bonding vs. bridging. The Internet clearly does support lots of group formation. To the extent that it enables like minds to gather, the kind of social capital thus created is what Putnam calls bonding social capital. This is useful and important, but can be insular. Cross-fertilization may not occur. Groups may turn inward, recycling memes that don't evolve. The countervailing influence is bridging social capital which connects dissimilar groups. This stuff is harder to create, but also more valuable.

These terms provide another way to understand the function of what I call human supernodes and what Malcolm Gladwell calls Connectors (people like Lois Weisberg). These people belong to many different groups, and they bridge among them. Tim O'Reilly is that kind of person. His conference in February brought together hackers, lawyers, politicians, biologists, and soldiers, and created lots of bridging social capital.

We have yet to see blogspace reach its full bridging potential. Radio Community Server will be part of the story. RSS is even more important, as a way of bridging among many kinds of tools and cultures.

I've watched the channelroll propagate to a number of Radio sites now. The subscription lists I see on other sites are, for the most part, very like mine. This tells me that there is more bonding than bridging going on at the moment. And it focuses my attention on the lists that are most different from mine. These, by definition, are bridges.

There are, of course, some promising bridging projects underway. At first, these mainly interconnect tech tribes. It gets really interesting when the bridges lead to other tribes -- of librarians, of academics, and I hope many others.
12:42:42 AM