About Blogging Alone

There was this guy Robert Putman who wrote an article about the decline of values and participation in social groups in the US, titled Bowling Alone. He claims that he has detected less participation in social groups like churches, league of Women Voters, and Bowling Leagues and that the results for America as a country are very bad. The loss in social capital also can indicate the loss of other nice things.

I think he is incorrect. He did detect less participation in things like Bowling leagues and League of women voters but at the same time he failed to take into consideration the huge increase in woman’s participation in college sports that followed title 9 and lead to the increase opportunity for women in the work place. My guess is that you gain more social capital in the workplace than you would at volunteer women’s groups.

So what is the state of Social Capital today? Why does active participation help individuals?

Then I look at things like Linux being developed via news groups. That to me is a huge example of technology linked communities organizing and cooperating to create a software operating system to rival any that the corporate or private sector has created.

Then watching dave over the years first with frontier then malina and now radio reminded me of the Linus Torval in his work to organize a community and collect their contributions in a useful way for the common good of the community.

The reach and speed of the internet for communication indicates to me that the amount of social capital is vastly greater that ever before but how can it be measured or communicated and after that why should anyone care. Then I look at all these web logs and think that all those individuals working alone but linked could provide a universe that is measurable and further they might be interested in the results.