One of his more ingenious experimental setups involves a female forced to choose between a male with coloring she likes and a shabbier individual she just saw mate with another fish. What will she choose? One instills a strong color preference. The other confers a tendency to copy the last female seen mating. Being desired makes one desirable.
The dominant paradigm in evolutionary biology asserts that genes are responsible for virtually all manifestations of animal behavior while the environment plays a small role. Dugatkin, professor of biology at the University of Louisville, challenges “that assumption by presenting the case that cultural transmission and gene-culture interactions are serious, underestimated forces in evolutionary biology.” He analyzes a broad array of behavioral studies to demonstrate that animals imitate each other regularly, learn new behaviors from this mimesis and even engage in activities that are best called teaching. Behavioral examples of simple and complex animals ranging from guppies to macaques, from blackbirds to humans, he proves that large brains are not a prerequisite for imitation. Even more important, Dugatkin establishes these actions as constituents of culture, which many scientists limit to humans
Interesting poll this week, can you create a community? I would vote: yes. Maybe not create in the sence that you can determine all the who, what and why’s, but the human herd effect might give you access to push some memes into a group? An unpopular thought… but what do you think? Can you steer either context or content of communities? Is Monkey see, monkey do a trigger? To get the discussion going, read this interesting theory on the Immitation Factor called Guppy Love: “Imitation plays an important role, both in society and markets. Negative and positive feedback generally co-exist in markets. Herding is the result of positive feedback getting the upper hand. There is substantial empirical evidence that people herd. Herding can result in market and social inefficiency. People should look for signs of diversity breakdowns–when a certain topic reflects a single-minded view.“
- Hosting Web Communities: Building Relationships, Increasing Customer Loyalty, and Maintaining A Competitive Edge
- Consciousness and Human Identity
- The Drucker Foundation Future Series: The Community of the Future (J-B Leader to Leader Institute/PF Drucker Foundation)
- Funology: From Usability to Enjoyment (HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION SER)
- Imaginary Communities: Utopia, the Nation, and the Spatial Histories of Modernity
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Toolbox
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by Bob Garfield (Isbn-13: 9780984065103)
What happens when the old world order collapses and the Brave New World is unprepared to replace it as an ad medium, as a news source, as a political soapbox, a channel for new episodes of Lost? Welcome to The Chaos Scenario. It's here, and Bob Garfield saw it coming. In his roles as Advertising Age editor-at-large and as co-host of NPR's On the Media, Bob Garfield long ago connected dots that many in media and marketing refused even to acknowledge. In this fascinating, terrifying, instructive and...
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I do believe that an imitation effect of some sort is applicable to society as well. I believe this to be trends or hypes even. All of a sudden we all wear white ear buds, and because everyone has them I need one as well. This act of imitation can take different forms or shapes. Opinion leaders, early adopters and the likes play a key role in it. So yes I believe you can ‘push’ some memes into a group.
However, pushing something ‘into a group’ means that some form of community already exists. Why else is that group defined as a group. The connection between the individuals has to be more than mere characteristics of it for people to feel attracted to each other. I don’t think those connections can be ‘created’. I do believe that you can attract a community around a specific piece of content: it can function as the stuff they talk about or as the means by which they identify themselves as a group. And you can also create a context to facilitate a community, by handing them the means to explicitly connect or communicate.
Now, does that mean that you are creating a community if you can influence those two things? Hmm…I think there’s more to it then just that, so I voted ‘no’.
i also voted no, but i do have some doubts now.
the term ‘create’ is very deterministic, while a community is something fluent and evolving. i don’t think you can create a community with 100% certainty of success, though you can add (and manipulate) a lot of important pieces involved in a successful community. we do not yet have a complete picture of the ’science of community’.
perhaps we should view communities as something ‘transient’. what i mean with that is that emergence and dissolving (is that the opposite?) are part of the community itself. in this model we can start philosophizing about other aspect of community because we broaden the scope a bit. what if we can ‘predict’ when (and how) a community might emerge? what if we can get some reasonable estimations about group size, group activity, group evolution (turnover is a part of something like that,) shifts in place and time? what if we can calculate when the ‘instability’ threshold is reached and the community is likely to dissolve? perhaps we can even reason where the individuals ‘flow’ to, where they will spend their time after the ‘game’ of this community has ended.
perhaps community building in a non-restricted environment (non work where incentives can be manipulated differently) is not a hard (true-false) science but much more like a complex weather system where we work with forecasts. if we understand this system, or the model of the system, we might be better able to manipulate communities. perhaps even the emergence of communities. isn’t that what it is about, in the end?
so, can we create a community? i don’t know. i think we have some variables to measure, and we also sense ways to manipulate. if we master the art of ‘manipulating’ communities we might be able to create 6 out of 10, or something like that. or perhaps 3 out of 100. we will be more successful than just chance. but 10 out of 10 seems unlikely, to me.