Communities

What is your community? Is it those around you? Those online? Your family, your friends spread around the globe?


Warren Ellis talks about message boards as his home on the internet. I realize you can make friends and groups there, draw information, seek out your answers with some help. Global Frequency comes to life. A loose collection of associates who can help you solve and take down an problem. Coordinated team running through multiple strains of data and programs to take a down problem each bringing his or her skill and mindset to the situation.

How to make this work in an emergency? During 9.11 groups helped out by spreading info and news about what, where, and who. Most of it was just information though.Katrina the same thing. Only coordination started to become something along with a ground response. Who needs what and where. Still it was on a smaller family/friends scale than anything as I remember it.

Global Guerilla's talks about it as Resilient Community:

Local is the only choice. The ability of the global system to dampen instability and prevent failure is nearing zero. We have neither the organizational frameworks necessary for global governance nor the precise tools of global policy required (even IF we were smart enough to manage something this complex). Any chance of real global change must start at the ground level by correcting the true sources of the problem and spread virally. Resilient communities eliminate nearly all of the drivers towards global instability and mitigate the effects of instability already in the system. It's self-reinforcing.

But what is local anymore? I go outside I barely know my neighbors much less trust most of them to be able to help in a crisis. Clean up they are great at. But how many have go bags at the ready to deal with a situation (priority one when I go back to work is getting my fast action gear ready and up to date).

So who is local? Who is it I can trust? Family/friends are spread out around the globe. They will do what they can, but some will have to go to work on their own jobs when a crisis arises.

Outquistion is what BoingBoing and Worldchanging are talking about. Teams going around after a disaster and helping out. Bringing in DIY and helping to make things better and more self reliant than before. Hippie Global Frequency is what I call it. But it is a thought process. Maybe idealistic, but it is there. Bring in new skills and new projects and new ways in the wake of devastation. Make it better, stronger, faster than it was before.

Damn it. There is something there in the brain which just isn't connecting. A story, a thought piece. Trying to put it all together. Hope you enjoyed this raw piece. Had to get it out.