How is it good?

I’m generally skeptical of claims that a community has been created. If there’s a community going on, people will enjoy the experience of it without having to fall back on the mere word ‘community.’ However, if a group of people say they’re in a community, then I suppose they are. Community is a slippery and scalable term. At root, I’ll say community is a group of people, a gathering over time.

It’s not much of a definition, and I’m sure there are professional community minders out in the world who have a more scholarly definition, and one susceptible of  quantitative research.  But, as I say, it’s a slippery term, and one which has a way of so fundamentally framing the discussion it’s used in that I’d rather not get too detailed.

What makes community?  Historically, there’s a geographic component.  Online experiences have been calling themselves communities for decades now.  Honestly, community is a pain in the neck.  It’s a term we’ve always used… you know, always… but in contemporary terms its a network of networks.

For instance, the Grand Rapids community has a geographic component–Grand Rapids, the surrounding townships and cities.  It has tendrils out to Holland, Ionia, Muskegon, and so on.  It has an official component–City Hall, the County, and State.  It has an institutional component–the hospital, the community foundation, the churches and so on.  It has an organizational component–private and semi-private clubs,  semi-public gatherings, reading groups.  It has a social component–families, friends, casual acquaintances, the people you work with, that hottie at the bar.

And more.

And all that stuff is interconnected.  That hottie at the bar is probably in your cousin’s reading group and may be an administrator in the medical records department of the hospital, and all that stuff.  The two of you may even be on the same e-mail list for organic food recipes.

The point isn’t to talk about Six Degrees of Separation.  The point is that over time new technologies always… always… add layers to what community means.

Same as with computers, the internet, cell phones, text messaging, wireless services… wireless access.  Every technology has the ability to bring us together in new ways.  And help keep us together.  I’ve recently moved a couple of hundred miles from my hometown, leaving behind most of my family.  My wife’s family is even more far-flung.  The big Christmas present this year was a webcam so we can all stay in touch.  Our son enjoys it, and every time we use it, I think of 2001 and bushbabies.  (Can jetpacks be all that far away?)

So, here’s the deal…  access to the new layer of networks of a community is a good thing, and has the potential to add new connections to the lives of people getting the access.  The problem is actually getting the access.  The project under development at forgr sounds like a terrific way of resolving the problem.