Social object and the object-centered environment

Sergeant Jalo­nen must have spent his child­hood in a con­crete sandbox

After I grad­u­ated from col­lege, I com­pleted manda­tory mil­i­tary ser­vice in the Finnish Army. The year-long expe­ri­ence yielded intense expe­ri­ences, life­long friend­ships and lots of sto­ries. One of them comes to mind: Jalo­nen and I were the first two sol­diers from our com­pany to be pro­moted to the rank of Sergeant. While I was pro­moted for tech­ni­cal skills in field oper­a­tions, Jalo­nen was cho­sen because he was a strict dis­ci­pli­nar­ian, as tough as nails. So tough was he, that our company’s sol­diers con­cluded among them­selves that he must have spent his child­hood in a con­crete sandbox!

Sur­round­ings and sit­u­a­tions affect your behavior

I never gave this story much thought except to joke about it with my friends.  Aside from the humor, how­ever, the sug­ges­tion is that a child­hood spent play­ing in con­crete sand­box will toughen you up. Were they too quick to judge? What part of Jalonen’s per­son­al­ity is attrib­ut­able to a dif­fi­cult child­hood, and what part is attrib­ut­able to the sit­u­a­tion of being in the army?

In “Blink,” Mal­colm Glad­well describes how peo­ple tend to over-emphasize personality-based expla­na­tions for behav­iors and dis­re­gard sit­u­a­tional ones (see fun­da­men­tal attri­bu­tion error). For instance, it’s tempt­ing to stereo­type a work col­league by say­ing “she’s tough nego­tia­tor.” How­ever, that same per­son may be seen dif­fer­ently by friends and fam­ily, who might describe the same per­son by aspects not nec­es­sar­ily shown at work: “fun-loving, car­ing, gen­er­ous, etc.” Uni­ver­sity of Oslo pro­fes­sor Ole Hanseth fur­ther explains,

You do not go about doing your busi­ness in a total vac­uum but rather under the influ­ence of a wide range of sur­round­ing fac­tors. The act you are car­ry­ing out and all of these influ­enc­ing fac­tors should be con­sid­ered together. This is exactly what the term actor net­work accom­plishes. An actor net­work, then, is the act linked together with all of its influ­enc­ing fac­tors (which again are linked), pro­duc­ing a network.

Can your phys­i­cal sur­round­ings act as an influ­enc­ing fac­tor on your behav­ior? Social Sci­en­tist Roger Barker exten­sively researched see Archi­tec­tural Psy­chol­ogy and found that, quite obvi­ously, “In a store, peo­ple assume their roles as cus­tomers; in school and church, proper behav­ior some­how already resides coded in the place”.

The object-centered environment

A store and a wed­ding are social objects (because they’re con­ver­sa­tion starters and top­ics for peo­ple). They are also object-centered envi­ron­ments. You step into a sit­u­a­tion that struc­tures your behav­ior. Both phys­i­cal struc­tures like stores, churches and pub­lic parks and sit­u­a­tional events like wed­dings, soc­cer games and flash­mobs con­di­tion the par­tic­i­pants’ behav­ior to per­form a cer­tain objec­tive col­lec­tively with like-minded others.

Work is a com­mon form of social object as well as an object-centered envi­ron­ment. When you go to work, you “plug-in” to an envi­ron­ment where you then social­ize with your col­leagues and cus­tomers, because you work at the same place. If you telecom­mute, you’re still “plugged in” to the work you do with your col­leagues. For instance, traders around the world plug in to finan­cial mar­kets. Such envi­ron­ments are rich social objects, both pos­i­tively and neg­a­tively. Think about the num­ber of var­ied work-related con­ver­sa­tions you’ve had over the years!

Mould­ing your environment

In Roger Barker’s research, the places were clearly iden­ti­fied with a set loca­tion and pur­pose, like a hard­ware store, a high school, a denom­i­na­tional church or a finan­cial mar­ket, like the Chicago Board of Trade (see Karin Knorr-Cetina’s paper on “The Mar­ket as an Object of Attach­ment”). But what about when you per­form a dif­fer­ent activ­ity in a loca­tion gen­er­ally meant for some­thing else? For exam­ple, a wed­ding may be per­formed nearly any­where. In Hawaii, Florida and the many other coastal areas, wed­dings may be car­ried out on a beach. In this case, the wed­ding super­sedes the beach-going activ­ity and con­di­tions the guests’ behav­ior. The wed­ding rit­ual is gen­er­ally stan­dard within cul­tures, and every­one knows what to expect: gath­er­ing, union, bless­ing, and cel­e­bra­tion. Other exam­ples include a birth­day party in a play­ground, pub­lic man­i­fes­ta­tions in city streets, flash­mobs in a store, doing work inside a Starbuck’s, Tup­per­Ware din­ners in someone’s liv­ing room, street soc­cer games, rock con­certs inside Sec­ond Life, clas­si­cal con­certs inside a church and a Bar­Camp in a con­cert hall. Each of these activ­i­ties bring peo­ple together around a shared object or objec­tive, they include their own rit­u­als, and they are per­formed in a cer­tain way. The objec­tive of the gath­er­ing super­sedes the pur­pose of the loca­tion and the envi­ron­ment is molded to suit the gathering’s pur­pose. Chairs are placed, tables are setup, goal­posts are erected in a field, and so on (see “Place­mak­ing, the way in which all human beings trans­form the places they find them­selves into the places where they live”).

Bernard Hunt, Man­ag­ing Direc­tor of HTA Archi­tects Ltd, talks about life in phys­i­cal spaces:

The phys­i­cal form of a place is only one side [of the coin]. The way life is lived in it, and the com­mon pur­pose around which that life revolves, is the other. And from cave dwellers to loft liv­ers human beings have always used places to achieve their com­mon pur­pose .… Some­how things were eas­ier when that pur­pose was pro­tec­tion against the ele­ments, defence from attack and con­trol of dis­ease. Suc­cess­ful place­mak­ing seemed to hap­pen when what was built was in direct response to imper­a­tives like defence and topog­ra­phy and also when it was done unself­con­sciously by dif­fer­ent peo­ple at dif­fer­ent times.

Barry Smith, Depart­ment of Phi­los­o­phy at the Uni­ver­sity of Buf­falo, writes:

A physical-behavioural unit such as a reli­gious meet­ing, a ten­nis cham­pi­onship or a sea bat­tle is an intri­cate com­plex of times, places, actions, and things. Its con­stituents can include both man-made ele­ments (build­ings, streets, cricket fields, books, pianos, libraries, the bridges and engine-rooms of bat­tle­ships) and also nat­ural fea­tures (hills, lakes, waves, par­tic­u­lar cli­matic fea­tures, pat­terns of light and sound). These fea­tures and ele­ments may be fur­ther restricted to a highly spe­cific com­bi­na­tion of, say, a par­tic­u­lar room in a par­tic­u­lar build­ing at a par­tic­u­lar time with par­tic­u­lar per­sons and par­tic­u­lar objects dis­trib­uted in a par­tic­u­lar pat­tern. In gen­eral, how­ever, it is a form of generic depen­dence which pre­vails in the realm of physical-behavioural units; a judge must hear and decide the case, but it need not be this judge; the cap­i­tal city must be located some­where, but it need not be located in this spot (and in time of war it may be relocated).

So whether the sit­u­a­tion is dic­tated by the pur­pose of the loca­tion or the pur­pose of the gath­er­ing, you behave accord­ing to the appro­pri­ate cul­tur­ally estab­lished rules you’ve learned. You have learned how to behave in a store and how to behave in a wed­ding.

What role for space in online com­mu­nity building?

In a dis­cus­sion thread in Jere­miah Owyang’s Com­mu­nity Strate­gists group in Face­book, Jonathan Trenn men­tions:

“I think this is an excel­lent ques­tion, but what con­cerns me is that we are not talk­ing about com­mu­ni­ties here…we’re talk­ing com­mu­nity plat­forms. Impor­tant distinction.”

This begs the ques­tion: to what extent is the plat­form an inte­gral part of the com­mu­nity? To what extent does the plat­form fos­ter or con­di­tion com­mu­nity behav­ior? Offline, a bas­ket­ball court may be an inte­gral part of a local com­mu­nity, just like a bingo hall, church, com­mu­nity cen­ter, gro­cery store, etc. If you take away such spaces, you would expect the com­mu­nity to change, because you would restrict the dif­fer­ent areas and rea­sons for peo­ple to find each other and inter­act based on their shared inter­ests. Does this same dynamic play online? To what degree does the archi­tec­ture, fea­tures and tools of the com­mu­nity spaces you pro­vide fos­ter or restrict com­mu­nity inter­ac­tion? (see Karin Knorr-Cetina’s work on “The Mar­ket as an Object of Attach­ment” is worth fur­ther read­ing for the notions of “wants and lacks”, “attach­ment” and “embed­ded­ness” in community.)

The way the online space is designed has wide rang­ing impli­ca­tions for com­mu­nity inter­ac­tion. “Social Design” deci­sions include whether to allow peo­ple to cre­ate a pro­file page, upload a pic­ture, write a bio, tag their con­tent, add book­marks on con­tent and peo­ple, com­ment on oth­ers’ cre­ations, add friends, deter­mine pri­vacy set­tings, invite friends, pub­lish to other plat­forms, cre­ate and mod­er­ate groups, browse pro­files and con­tent, “pivot” from one page to another, have per­son­al­ized URLs, receive email noti­fi­ca­tions of activ­ity, vote and rate con­tent, engage in phatic com­mu­ni­ca­tion, receive a mini-feed of friends’ activ­ity after login, clas­sify friends, par­tic­i­pate in pub­lic forums, and so on. These design deci­sions affect space, because each of these actions and activ­i­ties have a place­holder on the website.

Unlike a media like TV, mag­a­zines and other tra­di­tional media, social media is highly par­tic­i­pa­tory and cre­ated through the active con­tri­bu­tion and col­lab­o­ra­tion of peo­ple inter­act­ing with each other. Each design deci­sion and how it is expressed on the web­site, leads to far-reaching impli­ca­tions for the com­mu­nity. And if these deci­sions are not made and cer­tain fea­tures are not pro­vided, the com­mu­nity will find a way to either adapt their space or to find other spaces where they may engage in con­ver­sa­tion and activity.

Back to Jalonen’s con­crete sandbox

To tell you the truth, mil­i­tary ser­vice is not such a pleas­ant expe­ri­ence. There are thou­sands of con­straints on space, time and pri­vacy. Your iden­tity is formed daily in front of oth­ers through your behav­ior and actions. Hero­ics are per­formed and tiny hacks are found to break the rigid­ity. We found a way to build friend­ships and com­mu­nity, regard­less of the hard­ships. Over­all, how­ever, rel­a­tively few cher­ish the envi­ron­ment enough to want to make a career of it. It is not so much that Jalonen’s youth was spent in a con­crete sand­box, but that the army sit­u­a­tion itself was a fig­u­ra­tive con­crete sandbox.

Are your service’s users stuck in a con­crete sand­box? How do your website’s fea­tures fos­ter or hin­der iden­tity for­ma­tion, per­sonal expres­sion, pro­file dis­cov­ery, and com­mu­nity inter­ac­tion between peo­ple? Can the com­mu­nity appro­pri­ate and form the space to fit their needs? How might dif­fer­ent cul­tures appro­pri­ate the same website?

This post high­lights the impor­tance of design deci­sions in online com­mu­nity build­ing. Answer­ing these and sim­i­lar ques­tions with an eye to community-building, and before the first trace is drawn, deter­mines to a large extent the community-building and word-of-mouth poten­tial of your web service.