Easy like Sunday morning.

Unfortunately conflicting travel plans meant that I couldn’t attend Reboot 10 – although I’m sure JP will fill me in on some of the more interesting themes that emerged – but like most interesting conferences much of the material discussed is made available, analyzed and discussed on the web. And so it is that I am reading Stowe Boyd’s notes for the presentation he gave in Copenhagen – Web Culture: Identity, Belonging, And Scalar Freedom – while thousands of miles away on a humid Sunday morning by the lake…

On the ‘long-tail of human relationships’:

This long tail of relatedness and relationships changes our sense of identity and belonging. We can meaningfully belong to many groups, and invest ourselves deeply — in parallel — in their purposes.

Those of us who become most adept at this may become the most important and respected citizens of the post-everything world: the bridge builders that can arc from one to other groups, and act as arbiters and mediators. Remember that reputation-based authority and the belief in mediated settlements of disputes are universals. So this suggests a future role for the most connected, as people worldwide begin to lose faith in mass organizations to solve our disputes, or to even come up with workable compromise.

On ‘tribes’:

The bonds of trust and friendship that we are building at the Edge, today, may become the initial bridges that connect the tribes of this post-everything future.

We have learned that trust and reputation is personal, non-transferable. That obligation is between individuals, and that any group — elected officials, criminals, prisoners in jail, slum dwellers, and web edglings — will attempt to use whatever power they have to attempt to benefit their own, potentially to the detriment of ‘others’. So we need an ethical system — like that which is emerging on the web — where abuse of power is not tolerated, where rank and office is irrelevant, but where one’s reputation and honor is everything.

I don’t think I agree with everything Stowe writes about but I definitely think it is worth reading as it frames some of the fundamental – tectonic – social and cultural shifts shaking our current dogma to its core. And I continue to be an unapologetic fan of his centroid/edgling meme.

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