Pushing On The Platform

April 2nd in interaction

Small Group Social Interaction

There is a compromise between design objectives and the need by people to control the expression of those objectives and how they influence the information they are applied to. Local curtural influences are the prerequisite for social interaction in small groups(1) on the web.

A strong curtural influence shapes a definition of the web experience to defacto locale and community standards. This shape to interaction creates a social filter with respect to the web at large. It acts as a colloquial firewall.

The result is that peoples web experiences are defined long before they can decide how to interact. This situation is compounded by a lack of affordable bandwidth. Better infrastructure (and therefore connectivity) could help overcome gatekeeper tendencies. Improved information velocity challenges local cultural influence to social interaction on the web.

While bandwidth is an aperture with respect to the depth of field of a given web experience the focus of social influence is clearly local.

(1) base number for this exercise is ~3,000 potential users.

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