Surely there were groups before. We’ve always been grouped, as social beings we are defined by our groups. It takes a village to raise a child. I might say it takes a village a long time to raise a child. And there is the forgotten assumption. This assumption is that groups have a long life-span. But what if they don’t have to.
group |groōp|
noun [treated as sing. or pl. ]
- a number of people or things that are located close together or are considered or classed together : these bodies fall into four distinct groups.
- a number of people who work together or share certain beliefs : I now belong to my local drama group.
- a commercial organization consisting of several companies under common ownership.
- a number of musicians who play popular music together.
- Military a unit of the U.S. Air Force, consisting of two or more squadrons.
- Military a unit of the U.S. Army, consisting of two or more battalions.
- Art two or more figures or objects forming a design.
- Chemistry a set of elements occupying a column in the periodic table and having broadly similar properties arising from their similar electronic structure.
- Chemistry a combination of atoms having a recognizable identity in a number of compounds.
- Mathematics a set of elements, together with an associative binary operation, that contains an inverse for each element and an identity element.
- Geology a stratigraphic division consisting of two or more formations.
Certainly we’ve seen flashmobs in Belarus, and more recently, the ability for people to organize in Iran. What’s interesting is not the technology, but the quickly established trust. These groups form, do something, then disband. Not to say that relationships are not made. In many cases they are, and in many cases, such as group dating(compa) in Japan, the relationships are in fact the goal. Our traditional definitions looks at groups with ownership, in local proximity, or common purpose.
Two types of groups strike me.
One
a group that coalesces, quickly introduces, gets to work, and something comes out.
Two
a group like we’ve know a community to be, where people have accountability to each other, there are long term commitments and long-term shared benefits.
The first sounds pleasant, the second exciting. When I say something comes out, that is almost always at least the first type of group. An agreement to follow up, a community around an interest, a business built around a tool, a militia to defend a place. So really, the second type of group is the impetus for the first.
I see a couple reasons why this is different from before.
- Instead of your temporary group being limited to your locale, these groups can now form from the edges of the earth.
- It is significantly easier to build something of worth in a short time-span with a group of strangers. This is due to fabrication technology, communication technology, financial innovation, and the ever present web.
- Freelance or autonomous work is on the rise. People have more control over their time, and more time to work on projects they care about. The old model of career path is dying, and we are forced to re-imagine how we can “add value” to the economy.
- People are caring more about, well, people. There is a big interest in doing good, and even more in doing better. This can fuel innovation especially in the early stages of an endeavou.
In short, we can pull people from more place, build quickly, on our terms, toward a future we care about.
This is not to say that the pleasant long-term community is a less attractive model, in fact its the only thing that will make the temporary group possible. Much like speed dating, the more groups we’re exposed to, the better the match. Or to use a scientific metaphor, how might we evolve the groups we work in, or the ways we work, to better make use of the new possibilities inherent in rapid group forming?