I think people are more open to the idea of loosely connecting with strangers, with less involved, more transient personal relationships. Larger communities of all sorts, be it corporate, globally distributed families (and the communications to cheaply and effortlessly send them a purely habitual 'hello' every once in a while), or the more obvious online communities where we find stranger (lj and IM both spring to mind).
Similarly look at things such as flashmob, people putting in a small commitment, to be some part of a talked about phenomenon, however fleeting the fame is. And another side of the motivation, we've seen how a huge number of little contributions can really make a mark, band aid as the oldest example that springs to my mind, but a plethora followed, slickly presented, widely targetted, most people only giving a pound, yet on that alone, £50M appears for a worthy cause almost overnight.
I'm not convinced that oobis would be as successful today though, they were a commercial product, so much today can be done because either the medium is free, or any physicial side has trivial notional value (taking a letter with you somewhere, maybe spending 5 minutes on a detour, 2 minutes printing out bookcrossing details to stick in you book) If they were re-released today, I'd expect some clever, freer clone, something such as a fast food container, marked in a specific manner, to rapidly become the 'cool' alternative.
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Date: 2005-03-14 11:58 pm (UTC)Similarly look at things such as flashmob, people putting in a small commitment, to be some part of a talked about phenomenon, however fleeting the fame is. And another side of the motivation, we've seen how a huge number of little contributions can really make a mark, band aid as the oldest example that springs to my mind, but a plethora followed, slickly presented, widely targetted, most people only giving a pound, yet on that alone, £50M appears for a worthy cause almost overnight.
I'm not convinced that oobis would be as successful today though, they were a commercial product, so much today can be done because either the medium is free, or any physicial side has trivial notional value (taking a letter with you somewhere, maybe spending 5 minutes on a detour, 2 minutes printing out bookcrossing details to stick in you book) If they were re-released today, I'd expect some clever, freer clone, something such as a fast food container, marked in a specific manner, to rapidly become the 'cool' alternative.
the hatter