A few Friday afternoon thoughts about pheromones, information foraging, and the success of online communities brought on by reading a doctoral student’s proposal draft…
There seem to be a number of people pursuing biological models of the way online communities function. Of course, we had a go a few years back with our notion of “online self-organizaing social systems”:https://opencontent.org/docs/ososs.pdf, but there are much older comparisons that are (more?) interesting. I particularly like Pirolli’s notion of “information foraging”:http://www.acm.org/sigchi/chi95/Electronic/documnts/papers/ppp_bdy.htm . And you know what happens when you have a bunch of unconnected nodes floating around in your brain waiting to dock…
So I experienced an unscheduled docking today while reading a draft of Erin Edwards’ dissertation proposal. What if some online communities succeed because they provide trails to valuable information resources – ala pheromones to a rich food source for ants – which make the information foraging task easier for the individual compared to foraging alone? This seems reasonable, following Coase’s notion of “transaction costs”:http://coase.org/research.htm (which I believe should be the foundation of all collaborative assignments in education). This would provide a rational incentive for individuals to participate in online communities, and as I think about it, probably sums up a large part of why I built a summer home in the blogosphere.
I’m sure someone will post to alert me to the dated-ness of this thought and proclaim that this unoriginal nugget has been deeply explored elsewhere. That’s great. Just remember to provide links or references when you slam me.