Eric Jones on Social Capital
I was reading over at Eric Jones' Blog about his thoughts on the potential perils facing SNS in the probably not too distant future. Eric raises a very relevant point concerning the development of social capital. As he notes:
The new formed relationship has got to seem as if it can give a relatively similar amount of social capital as one formed without meditation, incentive or pressure. I mean lets face it once a relationship is established arbitrarily there is a certain assurance and trust that follows as opposed to one formed with an ulterior motive.
This is really another axis of evaluation that is common to all relationships but not yet analyzed for the exponentially formed SNS kind. In our regular lives, we know when relationships are valuable versus trivial. When we use text and computers to display them, unfortunately, we run into the "All Look Same" scenario where differentiation of relationships requires a domain of knowledge far outside of the organization system (SNS) to determine value.
I've referred to this, in other contexts, as the Junk Draw Problem. Since the SNS systems of today lack that granular, user-centric understanding of our relationships, we are forced to factor down our values into the "convenient" categories provided. This is the same problem we see with the Junk Draw in our kitchens. We've all got one somewhere. The draw that inevitably fills up with a myriad of crap that is, one the one hand filled with generally unrelated things and on the other, impossible to navigate without strenuous effort. This is, increasingly, my presiding metaphor when dealing with the categorization imposed by SNS 1.0.
I think Eric's question, however, is not only valid but also extremely hard to quantify in terms of social capital. I think the first place to start is to really ask ourselves if any relationship ever truly forms without an ulterior motive -- however trivial that motive may be.