When I’m not at my computer (rare) I’ve been finding myself at the local real estate office.
Two doors down the street is an office that has been a part of Munhall for about…. ever. The fact that it’s a Real Estate office and occasionally some real estate is bought, sold or whatever is really only a technicality.
During the work week at 10 am and 4pm (and before 10, between 10 and 4, and after 4) a group of local men of varying ages gather there to put the world, and each other to rights.
It’s like a daily roast for all involved. There are no holds barred.
It’s too bad that so few of the ideas born in the back of that office make it out of the door, surely the World would be a better place for it.
Oh, there is coffee too. Lots and lots of coffee, half as many do-nuts as there can be, a third of the muffins there should be and never enough creamer.
Anyway, I was thinking today. This is Social Networking, right? (Brogan, tell me if I’m wrong) There are business transactions, calls for help, finances, investments, and other business done there.
There’s very little to do with Computers, the Internet or IT in general though. In fact wherever possible they try to steer well clear of anything postdating a typewriter and abacus.
Still though, according to Wikipedia:
A social network is a social structure made of nodes (which are generally individuals or organizations) that are tied by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as values, visions, idea, financial exchange, friends, kinship, dislike, conflict, trade, web links, sexual relations, disease transmission (epidemiology), or airline routes. The resulting structures are often very complex.
I’ve never really been one for ‘networking’, never the ‘social butterfly’, even though I am the founder of an IT Networking Organization but this, I can do.
I don’t even know how I got into this group, it kind of just happened.
This all got me to thinking how now a lot has changed really, well at least between ‘Social Networking’ online and in person.
The idea hasn’t changed, if you know someone who offers a service you recommend them to someone else. If you’re in a group of like-minded individuals then you deal with each other. Because people know people the web spawns, people know each other and circles grow and the network expands.
‘Geeks’ haven’t changed either. I’m talking about that group which I consider myself not a part of. I’m talking about the stereotypical, pocket protector wearing, magic playing, bespectacled, reclusive, greasy, pimpled, unnecessarily long word using, IQ touting…. nerd.
So, where did the online social networking community come from? Social and IT (nerds) never meshed.
What caused a new group to emerge? when did it happen? I know that in Pittsburgh at least, the group of New/Social Media types I know can be as technologically knowledge as some of the nerdiest nerds out there but are nothing like them.
Would you call this one a subculture? it’s hardly an underground movement.
<
p>What do you think? Cause of the emergence? when? who and how?
