Notes from: Raine, Lee and Barry Wellman. 2012. Networked: The New Social Operating System. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.

PART I: THE TRIPLE REVOLUTION

CHAPTER 1 – THE NEW SOCIAL OPERATING SYSTEM OF NETWORKED INDIVIDUALISM

The Case of Trudy Johnson-Lenz

• In 2007 Trudy Johnson-Lenz fell on the stairs outside of her home. Her injuries required extensive cranial surgery.
• Peter Johnson-Lenz, Trudy’s husband, emailed photos of Trudy during her recovery to a few friends. Those friends forwarded the email, and within 36 hours, 150 people across North America responded with emails, text messages, and other forms of support.
• In time, acquaintances within their network helped Trudy and Peter secure meals and negotiate the looming insurance, billing, and financial-aid bureaucracy that they would have to face when paying their hospital bills.
• As Trudy required more surgeries, Lisa Kimball, a recipient of one of the original forwarded emails, utilized email and blogs to help the Johnson-Lenzes finally ask for financial help.
• Kimball set up a PayPal e-commerce website for the Johnson-Lenzes, and with a “pay it backward” message and a large social network to get the message out, it reached many people, some whom the Johnson-Lenzes did not know, and these people began to make donations.
• Throughout Trudy’s ordeal, she, her husband, and everyone in their extending social network coordinated using email, group software, websites, “landline” phones, and mobile phones.
• After reflecting on the “art of networking” and their experiences with outpourings of generosity, the Johnson-Lenzes realized that “…we need to schmooze, circulate, and network a lot more to survive.”

Notes from: Introduction (Chapter 1): Van Dijk. 2012. The Network Society, 3rd edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Networked Individualism

• Just as mass printing, the automobile, and television did not overload us with information and force us into social isolation, the Internet is not killing sociability. Nor is it an isolating system as some claim.
• These technologies have something significant in common. Rather than isolating people, as many claimed they would, they have been incorporated into people’s social lives.
• In a sense, we are not hooked on our gadgets, but hooked on each other: Use of social networking websites: 2005-2013.
• Gadgetry does alter the course of our interactions, though.
• We have become increasingly networked as individuals, and increasingly less embedded in groups.
• “In the world of networked individuals, it is the person who is the focus: not the family, not the work unit, not the neighborhood, and not the social group” (6).
• “Networked individualism” represents the new social operating system. It is the new way in which people connect, communicate, and exchange information.
• Contrast with the longstanding operating system: hierarchical bureaucracies and small, densely knit groups such as households, communities, and workgroups.
• This system is personal. The individual is at the autonomous center.
• Within this system, many of us are multiusers who interact with a diversity of others simultaneously; we are often multitasking, capable of doing several different things; and we are multithreaded, capable of doing those things more or less simultaneously—compare to multithreading in computing.
• The late-modern presentation of self and a new type of “confidence game”.
• In the case of Trudy and Peter Johnson-Lenz, the networked social reality that succored their efforts and requests for assistance was made of looser, more fragmented networks that were different from the networks that existed in rural areas and urban villages in generations past.
• In this new world of networked individualism, which has advanced through the revolutionary use of the Internet and mobile phones, has sociability diminished, trust between one another been lessened, social cohesion been reduced, loneliness become more widespread, and people’s collective capacity to help one another been imperiled?
• Rather than looking at this new world as a “vague simulacrum of real community”, perhaps we should view it as an emerging social order characterized by social networks that are more diverse and less overlapping than small, densely knit groups such as families, villages, and small organizations.
• Contrast this with Marshall McLuhan’s conceptualization of the “Global Village” (and this).
• New strategies and skills (i.e., the “art of networking”) are developed out of necessity.
• This process may become socially taxing, however.
• A paradox: The same technology that promises to connect people also threatens to overload them.
• The Internet and information and communication technologies (ICTs) help in nourishing the communities that evolve within this new social environment and operating system.

The Triple Revolution’s Impact on How Networked Individuals Live Their Lives

• Three revolutions have significantly contributed to the shift away from tight group relationships and toward less tight, more diverse personal networks.

I. The Social Network Revolution has provided the opportunities and stresses that motivate people to reach beyond the world of tight groups. 
II. The Internet Revolution has provided people with communications and information-gathering powers that dwarf those of the past.
III. The Mobile Phone Revolution has allowed ICTs to become body appendages that allow people to contact friends and access information at will. Physical separation by time and space is less important than ever.

• A variety of qualities typify the networked individual.
• They tend to rely on various loose social ties and networks (e.g., some that are geospatially proximate and others that are far-flung but connected) rather than a single, “home” community.
• They maintain partial membership in multiple networks and rely less on permanent membership in settled groups, and so must negotiate constant flux and turnover in their social environments and networks.
• They use technology in a way that maximizes the strength of weak ties.
• They have the ability to create media, project their voices, drawn in diverse audiences, and tell their stories through many new means of social interaction such as email, blogs, Twitter, and Facebook.
• They are empowered by social networks, the Internet, and mobile phones, as these represent vast information stores that can be accessed and expanded at the user’s fingertips.
• They participate in diverse milieus that allow them to present their selves differentially, with little overlap, depending on their personal interests and characteristics. This participation allows the development of a networked self—a core self that emphasizes different identities in different milieus.
• They are connected with colleagues in different ways now compared to the past. The boss/subordinate relationship is changing. Three quarters of all American workers use the basic tools of Internet browsing, emailing, messaging, and mobile phone technologies, allowing them to be more autonomous, creative, and collaborative.
• Relatedly, the face of work organization has changed. Work is more spatially dispersed and the networked individual can work remotely, from home or in their car. The home-work dividing line has also been shattered by ICTs. Home and work have been intertwined like never before.
• As the use of ICTs and participation in social networks have precipitated the turn from groups to networked individuals, new expectations and realities about transparency, availability, and privacy of people and institutions have emerged. Some communications (e.g., texting and private messaging) are more private than ever, while new social media has brought individuals back into networks, allowing for new means of disclosure and self-presentation. Privacy concerns have also emerged over the commercialization of personal information.
• Networked individuals become more and more networked as they attempt to rationalize and make sense of these emerging social realities, expertise, and information. The use of existing diverse sources of information, social networks, and mediums of communication become increasingly necessary in order to interpret the meanings and verify the legitimacy of emerging ones.

Is the Triple Revolution Having a Good or Bad Impact on Society?

• The answer is twofold: the triple revolution is having both and more of a good and bad impact on society.
• Networked individualism is the reality of many everyday lives.
• Different networks operate in different ways:
• Some provide havens, where a sense of belonging and being help are distinguishing qualities.
• Others provide bandages—emotional aid and services that help people cope with the stresses and strains of their situations.
• Still others provide safety nets that lessen the effects of acute crises and chronic difficulties.
• They all provide social capital—interpersonal resources that help individuals not only survive and thrive, but also to change their situations, their neighborhoods, or perhaps the world.
• In an era of free agents, where the spirit of the time is personal agency, we do not live in a “World According to Me” or a world of autonomous and increasingly isolated individuals. Rather, we live in a “World According to the Connected Me” that is both empowering and liberating, and at the same time continually constrained by and dependent upon outgrowths of networked life.
• Building trust is a primary concern for the networked individual and the primary currency of social networks.
• Some of the changes produced by the triple revolution and networked individualism are beneficial to people and make society better. Others challenge personal fulfillment and make society harsher.
• Is this what Marshal McLuhan meant when he said that becoming an increasingly tribal world could lead to “abrasive situations” and “arduous interfaces” within the “Global Village”?

Chapter 1: Introduction from, Van Dijk. 2012. The Network Society, 3rd edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Chapter 2: The Social Network Revolution

Back to The Networked Society Lecture Notes

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