Diffusion, Facebook and Why We Need Little Edible Walls

First off, I really enjoy the class 2-readings format, because it's a perfect way to create two sides we can all argue at length. I concluded over years of class discussions that it is difficult for people to talk about what one thing "is", but people will endlessly argue about the differences between two things, i.e. when one is the other and when it is not.Last week's class discussion mentioned this collective negotiation of meaning that Wenger described, and when only one term is discussed (like "knowledge") people are more willing to let their term's boundary expand and fit the whole room's definitions. But when trying to say when "knowledge" is not "information", suddenly we're expanding two definitions at once and everyone's boundaries are different. I don't have any equations or engineering proofs for this, but the metaphor that sticks in my head is a plate of food. If I just had a big pile of stir-fry on my plate and nothing else, I don't care if the sauce/noodles/etc spread; it can change shape and move around for all I care, because it's the only food I'm eating right now. But if it's Thanksgiving, and I've loaded cranberry sauce next to my mashed potatoes and gravy next to my corn and butter, suddenly there are several things to worry about and I try to stop the flavors from overtaking each other. Cranberry-gravy-flavored corn? No thank you. The fact that it will all mix together anyway in my stomach? Who cares. We have boundaries and we want to experience some things without those boundaries being compromised. If only someone sold bags of tasteless but edible little dividers that we could put on our plate, to keep the flavors in their homes and feel constructive at the same time...So a more-relevant example of this anti-diffusion behavior is in Facebook and MySpace. Sure, both social sites allow people to throw their lives (away) onto the public domain, but why are they still so distinct? Wenger keeps talking about interaction and negotiation by these communities of practice, which can naturally emerge rules and culture without formally agreeing to. Once these "soft rules" come into place, they are surprisingly hard to remove. I was in my undergraduate college's first ever class- while we watched most of the social structure and policies create themselves, it was near impossible to reverse many of them. There were many times where we knew the rules had to be broken but could not convince everyone to allow it, even though the rules were created a couple months prior, and before any situation even called for it. Communities will settle into traditions and standards without even asking to, and as chaotic Facebook or Myspace seem, they are already quite distinct in culture.Look at MySpace. Around for many years until suddenly a surge in popularity swept them to the top spot of the personal internet, I couldn't find any data yet... but do you think it was the ~20% market adoption that Rogers said is the point when everyone suddenly hops on the bandwagon? Facebook had a similar rise out of a muck that included many other alternatives... again no data, but was Facebook lucky that they just reached 20% before Friendster and similar cousins? Now the two share the social kingdom, and yet remain remarkably separate... MySpace could easily ask for the deep personal information Facebook requires, and gain much of the other's functionality, but sticks to its long culture of being a person's #1 music/photo/video/comment dump. Facebook could (and kind of does) allow the same media to be thrown all over their pages, but people don't, instead sticking to the information-rich aspects. I know more people with accounts on both sites than one or the either, and I think people enjoy it because there is an evolved separation; Facebook and MySpace can still feel like two unique cultures.MySpace! Culture! Sound the alarms.So in Rogers we learn about innovations like social sites and how exactly they are spread and adopted, but little is mentioned about the inside of the curve. 'Everyone' in Penn State is on Facebook, so the curve is done, great. As a teacher I want to join the program and harness this new technology, but my students see me and flee for the hills, or simply privatize their info to the public because "squares" are infiltrating their favorite culture. But the curve says everyone adopted it, right? It stays at 100%, right? Well the technology does, but not the specific option. 12 months from now, when faculty are on Facebook and ruining the young atmosphere, an identical clone site could come out and suck out everyone under 25, leaving teachers with an essentially useless tool and knowledge that joining the clone site would just repeat the cycle.Unlike most technologies, these ones ARE social communities... the communities are the technology, and educators can't reap any benefits if their methods (or mere presence) do not fit the culture of the site. Old people or authorities can't just join Facebook and start chatting; they have to figure out how to make the smallest wound. Think of it like making a tiny cut an inserting an all-knowing catheter into your student's heart... he's more likely to accept than if you walked up with a rib saw and a flashlight saying "I'll put you back together when I'm done".