I was given a copy of the book _The Silicon Valley Edge_ edited by
Chong-Moon Lee, William F. Miller, Marguerite Gong Hancock, and Henry S.
Rowen, yesterday. An opening chapter is "Mysteries of the Region:
Knowledge Dynamics in Silicon Valley" by John Seely Brown, and Paul Duguid,
in which Alfred Marshall's _Principles of Economics_ (1890) is praised for
predicting the dynamics of clustering that occurs here. (01)
"The heart of Marshall's analysis, of course, concerns the way that
industrial localiztion has collective, systemic properties that fall
somewhere between market and firm. ..In all, Marashall was remarkably
insightful and "foresightful," presenting and predicting at the end of the
nineteenth centry many of the characteristics now associated with Silicon
Valley at the end of the twentieth." (02)
The chapter is clearly a worth read. I think it presents some useful
insights into the nature of communities such as this one. (03)
Jack (04)
At 05:16 PM 1/24/2003 -0800, you wrote:
>On Fri, Jan 24, 2003 at 11:58:48AM -0800, Jack Park wrote:
>
> > Those are just my own views. Your mileage may vary. In any case, yes, I
> > think those are the kinds of questions that should occasionally be raised
> > in any forum. And, I simply don't have answers that are necessarily
> > sufficient to respond to them. I have just outlined the heuristics I
> > apply. I'd like to see others.
>
>Great post, Jack, and some more great questions! I agree with your
>statement that the factors are fairly subjective. My response to this
>question would be to use that subjectivity as the criteria. It's
>similar to the Squirm Test. (Many of you know what I'm talking about
>when I say "Squirm Test." For those of you that don't, I'm writing a
>short paper on it, so look out for it. If you just can't wait, ask
>here, and I won't wait to explain.)
>
>In order to measure the size of the community, you have to know what
>constitutes membership in a community. That's the fundamental
>question we need to answer.
>
>My solution would be, find everyone who thinks their a member of a
>community, and ask if they consider each other to be members of the
>community. If you are affirmed by some majority, then you are indeed
>a member.
>
>This does not require that everyone knows everybody else. If there's
>some shared understanding about what constitutes a member, then you
>can identify people as members even if you don't know them.
>
>Examples. You're starting up a company. You have three people. You
>ask each person, "Are you a member of the team?" They all say yes.
>You ask the others, "Is he/she a member of the team?" They all say
>yes. You therefore have a team of three people. Implicit in the
>responses is the shared understanding that, as a salaried employee of
>the company, they all belong to the same team.
>
>Another example. There's an online forum for discussing football.
>There are about 10 active posters, a few people who post occasionally,
>and 10 lurkers. Ask the active posters whether they are part of the
>community, and they will most likely say yes. Ask them about the
>other active posters, and they will probably say yes again. So the
>active posters are members.
>
>What about the occasional posters? Some of them might not consider
>themselves members, so you can eliminate them. Some of them might.
>So you ask the active posters about them. Here's where the
>subjectivity comes in. It may just so happen that all of the active
>posters have beers with one of the occasional posters every Friday
>night. So they definitely consider him part of their community.
>That's a complication if you have to consider when analyzing online
>communities. You can't measure them simply by the online presence.
>
>What about the lurkers? Same problem, with another twist, which I'll
>discuss in my last example.
>
>Final example. Suppose you are crazed Oakland resident who shows up
>at the Coliseum every Sunday, dressed as Darth Vader and armed with a
>beer in one hand and a D cell battery in another. In other words, you
>are a Raiders fan. You also likely consider yourself to be a part of
>a community that calls itself the Raider Nation, and if you're showing
>up to games dressed like that, others probably agree.
>
>What about the crazed New York residents who shows up to the
>Raider-Jets games at the Meadowlands dressed in the same attire?
>Would they consider themselves part of the Raider Nation? Probably.
>Would the Oakland contingent agree? Probably.
>
>What about the quiet, blue collar fella who can't afford to go to
>games, but who watches every game on TV, owns a Charles Woodson
>jersey, and has been a fan since he was five years old? Would he
>consider himself a member of the Raider Nation? Probably. Would the
>others agree? Probably.
>
>In this situation, we have a huge community, where people do not
>necessarily know the other members. However, there's a shared
>understanding that if you're a hard-core Raiders fan, you're a member
>of the Raider Nation. (Remember, "fan" comes from "fanatic.") The
>definition of "hard-core fan" is subjective, and not all of the
>members are visible, so measuring the size of the community is
>difficult, but at least you have a pretty good criteria for
>membership.
>
>If you have a community where there's a lot of disagreement over who
>is a member and who isn't, that's indicative of a lack of shared
>understanding, which is indicative of a low collective IQ.
>
>-Eugene
>
>--
>This message is archived at:
>
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>
> (05)
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