Denham and I have been talking about metaphors for collaborative software, especially blogs and wikis. He suggested an urban analogy, which struck me as productive, so I'll develop it a bit here, with his blessing.
Caveat: this is a first pass at the topic, and doesn't get into urban studies or metaphor theory.
We're used to thinking of collaborative tools as shared spaces, and sometimes signal this with metaphors drawing on human spatial constructions: shared rooms, classrooms, kitchens, virtual houses, virtual chautauquas, and the like. Such metaphors are rhetorically focused on a single construction in some isolation, even when embedded in the Web.
In this vein a wiki or discussion forum is like a houses or public building, a convivial zone for social presence, rapid conversation, and an accumulation of information. They can point outwards, using the shared space as a harvesting area, a stockpile, or a library. These can be guarded spaces, "safe as houses", where the exclusion from a larger urba, exurban, or suburban space means refuge or privacy. When users are transitory, moving into and out of the surrounding buildings, the wiki or forum is place to return to, to store materials, accumulate discussion, archive knowledge over time.
Blogs stand in some contrast to wikis and fora in the urban metaphorical scheme. Considered formally (strictly as rapid web publication of contents in reverse chronological order) or in restricted isolation (as a sole-author, few-readers LiveJournal) blogs resemble the one house model, like a wiki or discussion forum. But blogs are urban creatures, when we view them formally in terms of their habit of extensive hyperlinking, or the popular comments feature. The urban metaphor also holds when we consider blogs socially, in the light of larger readerships, ranging from larger pools of LiveJournal buddies to the entire world of Web users. That sense of embeddedness within a metropolis increases when we add the growing tool set of blog connectors, usually thought of as part of social software: trackback, RSS, dynamic indexing, RSS search and blog search, and the suite of Technorati services. These tools are urban navigation tools which connect single-occupancy houses, like street maps, railway guides, tourist information centers, predictable street naming and location address numbering schemes, or phone booths. This combination of social software connection strategies help us find our way from house to house, pointing us to that one bar with the conversation we like, or the club, theater, shop we prefer.
The Dodgeball service weds this metaphor to this practice perfectly.
Hi Bryan,
I think Denham's analogy is apt. I do, however, want to point out that cities are as much creations of our fears, ignorance, and social preferences as they are of "liberation" from semi-communal village life.
While there are some beautiful neighborhoods there are also, alas, slums.
This is to say that maps and search tools will best serve those who 1) know how to use them and 2) understand the hidden complexities of urban life.
I'd wager that most of us well-fed suburban types haven't got a clue about the latter ... and aren't likely to acquire it out of the, ah, ether. :-)
Posted by: librarybob | January 31, 2005 at 09:39