Conversation

1/ I’ve concluded there are 4 types of relationships meatspace communities can have with digitization, which I call a) Circled Wagons, b) Resurrected, c) Atomized, and d) Precipitated.
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2/ Circled Wagon communities were never fragmented by digitization because they were homogenous, immobile, and geographically compact. They’ve been largely turned into de facto alt-reality cults in response to digital forces.
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3/ Resurrected communities are ones torn apart by digital forces, but have consciously reforged themselves. What didn’t kill them made them stronger. Well digitized workplaces that foster IRL communities while using slack/video conference/flex work are examples.
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4/ Atomized communities are ones that were torn apart by digital forces but couldn’t pull themselves back together again. Urban apartment communities are an example. Once digital tools made it easier to maintain deeper online-first relationships, neighborly communities broke down
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5/ And finally, Precipitated communities are ones that went offline after first forming online. They are kinda like second gen stars with higher amounts of heavier elements (confusingly called Population 1) which are a good metaphor for the tech content.
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6/ Creative-destruction signatures: Circled Wagons are digitally imploded, Atomized are digitally exploded. Resurrected are creative-destructed, and Precipitated are digitally created.
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8/ Unclear why we made this mistake over 2 decades, but the results are there to see. We understand the anomie and estrangement of atomization fairly well, but severely underestimated what happens to communities that *stay together* while being hit by digitization.
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9/ I think we’ve been making the lazy assumption that geographic and social mobility can always be assumed to play a role in how people adapt to digital transformation. In fight/flight/freeze, we (as usual) neglected the “freeze” demographic. Turns out it’s the most important.
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10/ Why? Fight responses tend to drive towards their own resolution naturally, so they don’t grow out of control invisibly. Flight tends to put people in more adaptive conditions, with atomization being the cost. Freeze? Problem just grows worse and worse.
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11/ The psychographics of Trump voters is almost pure freeze/Circled Wagons: low mobility, culturally homogeneous, low college education. Such communities are at the highest risk of radical collective trauma from digital social transformation. Why?
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12/ An Atomized, Resurrected, or Precipitated person largely sees information warfare as confusing FUD and noise, and develops some hygiene practices. All of them have filter bubbles that are *primarily online* and not being reinforced offline.
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13/ Circled Wagon communities on the other hand, are like cognitively aligned magnets. They have an online filter bubble like the rest of us, but it is strongly and powerfully reinforced offline via meatspace interactions with people who all think like them.
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14/ As I’ve been saying since one of my early Breaking Smart essays, geography is the strongest filter bubble (credit for this insight to ). But we now know a shit ton more about why this is and what the consequences are.
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15/ In-person interactions are powerfully human, and add massive weight to belief structures. Picking up a fake news opinion from some rando is one thing. Having it then reinforced by your 10 lifelong neighbors who also picked it up and internally flesh it out... explosive.
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16/ We’ve all seen this. It’s especially obvious in (for example) the things our old relatives forward. Everybody above 70 is apparently on the same email lists and they all live next to each other. But it’s not a problem of age. It’s a problem of cognitive mobility.
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17/ Cognitive mobility is probably a lousy term but I can’t think of a better one. Something about how much variety there is in the minds that most powerfully reshape/reweight your beliefs. One in-person interaction counts for like 10-100 online, for the same belief.
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18/ What can we do about this? You can’t just yell at people “choose Atomization over Circled Wagons” and you can’t guarantee that a more open response to digital forces will lead to Resurrection rather than death.
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19/ You also can’t deny the strong need for physical community with “just get some VR goggles and get in the Nozick experience machine already.” Human desire for physical community is a predictor for adaptation success. Less desire = more success at the moment.
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20/ In terms of adaptive fitness in digitally transformed social landscapes, the total pole of psychological health is probably Resurrected > Precipitated > Atomized > Circled Wagons.
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21/ This adaptation scale is partly due to the fact that those who most strongly desire physical community are also the most scared of losing it, and therefore scared to try bolder cultural practices of transformation that risk death of the community.
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22/ For Circled Wagon types, fear of ending up Atomized far exceeds allure of ending up Resurrected, so they largely don’t try. Stick to the community forms you know. Except for alienated kids in basements who know they have too many decades of life left for it to work out.
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23/ An interesting tech challenge is working more on Resurrection and Precipitation products. This might increase the confidence of Circled Wagon types, assuage their (unacknowledged under bluster) fears and give them the sense of security to try more open adaptation.
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24/ It is really pathetic that in the last couple of decades the best we’ve been able to do with Precipitation tech is meetup dot com. There is no good Resurrection tech that I know of, besides randomly finding old school friends you actually want to reconnect with on Facebook.
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25/ Until there are products that better meet this need, we’ll keep having to deal with entrenched Circled Wagons. They’ll continue to die slowly, painfully, and angrily. With their Boomer edge eventually dying and leaving behind a radicalized youth in unviable/unlivable towns.
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