I was hoping to get back on a regular schedule with the posting, but this whole unemployment thing is harder work than it seems… With all the buzz and hype on Web 2.0, it’s sort of been harder to find real insight online, but recently I’ve spotted some particularly interesting bits:

• Designing for the Sandbox – this is peterme’s new blog (dealing with Web 2.0, and issues of openness, control, trust, authencity, and whatever else deemed relevant), spurred by his recent writing and tracking a more interesting angle than the regular biz boosterism
• Abstract Dynamics: Web 2.0 – Abe Burmeister’s recent critical essay that gives valuable context and perspective to some of the more exhuberant claims (peter responded and Abe responded back)
• Why Web2.0 Matters: Preparing for Glocalization – probably the most interesting Web 2.0 essay I’ve seen recently, connecting many different disparate threads into a very cohesive thesis, while being appropriately self-reflexive (looks like all that schooling coming in handy)

What’s interesting is that Danah’s primary point, emphasizing social context, is something that she’s been saying for quite a while (but perhaps still not being giving appropriate attention to by developers? to be fair, it is a fairly hard property to quantify). What did strike as particularly interesting from my perspective is the emphasis on articulating scope. For Upcoming.org, the glocalization is rather literal, with local social proximity mapped against geography (and friends) and across interests with tags, and now groups.

While I can’t claim the rigor that others have for creating extended, focused essays, I do want to try to touch on a point that has so far, I think, been underexplored: how these social contexts (communities) relate to identity.

At the strategic level, there seems to be a big push for “identity” which seems to translate, loosely coded, as a person GUID. Beyond the general misguidedness of monolothic identity at a philosophical level, this seems to miss the point (and indeed, work at odds) with where the actual value lies: that identity functions in the context its relationships, and that context is generated primarily by activity.

Related to that line of thought, what we’ve seen in these Web 2.0 is creation of platforms and services, but it seems there’s been a blind-spot to how these services can fit within existing community infrastructure. We’re still seeing “Sign-up for XYZ new site, (re)create social context!” instead of an “Augment an existing community, leverage existing social context!” — and there’s a tangible downside to this blindness that extends beyond the inefficiency, or the “fuck it up” factor of trying to re-articulate what already implicitly exists: the additional friction and artificial infrastructure segmentation is going to ultimately limit your growth.

That could probably do with some unpacking and concrete examples, but it’s getting late.