Community Essential to Identity
Nearly a year ago I logged on to linkedin.com and set up a profile. I was curious about it because a reviewer in some magazine, Time maybe, referred to it as “Facebook for grownups.” Anyway, I set up a profile, searched around a bit, and decided that not much was going on.
About two weeks ago I heard from a friend that I needed to update my Linkedin profile, because it was way out of date. When I logged into my account (for the first time since I had set it up) I was startled at how much things had changed in such a short period of time.
It made me think about the mid 80s, when Compuserve was the only player on the internet (other than Unix code, finger and FTP). I had a Compuserve customer ID that had only three digits in it, and a “personal” computer that took up the entire surface of my large oak desk. Compuserve was nice, because it provided some communication tools that were otherwise unavailable on the early internet. Then AOL came along in the early ‘90s it was clear that major changes were going to occur. AOL was a community, and really promoted themselves as such. Compuserve was a technical interface with the internet that provided some cool tools. Sure, Compuserve had bulletin boards, but even the bulletin boards were a way for people with like interests to talk about topics that were interesting to them, and the relationships seemed like more of a side benefit.
I didn’t join AOL, because I didn’t feel the need for that community. But a lot of my friends became interested in the internet because of AOL, whereas they had not been interested before. I remember asking what was so interesting about communicating with all those people they didn’t know, and almost to a person the answer was that it was fun and interesting, a great way of meeting new people.
No matter what happened to AOL, they understood – or maybe they just fell into – a burgeoning need for community. It seems like there have been a few different but ultimately intersecting tracks occurring in modern life. The first is the ubiquitous computer. When I bought my first personal computer everyone thought I was crazy. My dial-up connection to use the internet was over my phone line using a modem, and transfer of any amount of data took a lot longer than faxing. Now everyone has a computer, including most 10-year-olds, and those who don’t have a computer and high-speed access to the internet from home can use the computers at the public library for free.
The next is the pace at which business operates compared to only 20 years ago. Our work has sped up, the labor force is getting more and more stretched, and businesses continue to seek ways to improve productivity, so everyone is working harder and faster. The stress this puts on the family is enormous, and for those who haven’t managed to establish families yet, it’s nearly impossible to do.
Enter the internet community. Teenagers report they talk more with their Facebook community than the friends they go to school with – and many of their Facebook friends are the friends they go to school with. In the space of one year Linkedin seems to have grown enormously. Microsoft was so frantic to get a deal with Facebook before Google did that it’s said they cut the deal in the space of one weekend.
The difference between Linkedin and the early AOL is actually quite striking. Early AOL was a way to meet people all over the country that you would otherwise not meet. Linkedin is a way of maintaining your own personal network so you don’t lose touch. Does this mean people aren’t staying in touch with their own networks now? That we’ve become so isolated from one another that we need electronic communities to connect?
And where does this all lead? If it’s true that identity can only be understood in terms of community (which I believe), and our communities have disintegrated about as far as we humans can tolerate, then it makes sense that services like Linkedin and Facebook step in to fill the gap. Of course, the ego is just a construct, and our ability to create a false identity in these virtual communities is very high, so then one wonders what will happen to the psyche in the process. I don’t think it’s necessarily bad or good – it’s just a very interesting step in the evolution of the concept of self.
I updated my profile on Linkedin, and I’ve already heard from a few people that I really had lost touch with. So that’s good. The idea of building virtual networks of people who work together from all different parts of the globe is exciting. And I’m a strong proponent of anyone who can gain work flexibility by leveraging the power of the internet and computers to be at home and with their families more. But I am concerned about the prospect of a world in which people need distance networks to maintain friendships and connections. And there’s a very specific reason why.
When people talk about their relationships at work, it is infrequent to hear them talk about them in glowing terms. Too frequently work relationships are a drain on the soul and not food for the spirit. If that’s the case, and if there is not enough other community balance – either in time or in numbers – then what happens to our overall health? And can a bunch of unhealthy people in a building create a healthy business? Because if they can’t, then all the Facebooks and Linkedins in the world won’t fix it.
(c) 2007, Andrea M. Hill
