Cohousing-L Mailing List: Why community building software is important

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

I recently finished reading "The Chaos Machine: The inside story of how social 
media rewired our minds and our world" by Max Fisher. It’s about the dark side 
of social media, not just how it can be used to promote misinformation, 
confusion, and conflict, but how the technology companies can use it to lure 
readers into becoming addicted and radicalized. That sounds extreme but read 
the book to understand how it does this. It’s evidence-based research that 
helps you understand how vast and capable the software is.

I just started "Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked 
Protest" by Zeynep Tufekci (try typing that three times fast first thing in the 
morning!) which is the positive side of social media. How it has enabled 
communications by people living in autocratic repressive regimes for centuries 
to finally feel free to listen without censorship and to speak without fear of 
death (literally). For the first time in history in many countries, people can 
share what is happening in their villages and learn what is happening elsewhere.

Tufekci also discusses how young journalists in places like Turkey have learned 
to check the metadata to confirm the validity of messages and to triangulate 
with local sources to validate photographs. Since the late 1990s and 
increasingly with the introduction of smartphones they have been able to report 
from the scene with judges and police officers none the wiser. When the 
authorities excluded traditional mass media journalists, they paid no attention 
to the kids in the corner on their phones! Ironically, even in areas with no 
electricity, Tufekci reports that she rarely had internet connection problems 
and that there are charging stations along the roads, even in places with 
barely passable roads.

How does this connect to cohousing and software? Technology has allowed 
journalists to receive information from many kinds of sources so they have a 
multidimensional understanding of events. People aren’t limited to their 
personal or company contacts in the field or the point of view of one kind of 
source. What this has done is tie community members closer together from the 
bottom to the top, from the village to international media sources. From the 
person looking out their window to the person being ordered to fire tear gas.

The technology allows a much greater range of information, but most importantly 
it enables many more voices. Everyone can speak. Obviously, there are 
limitations related to being literate but even then people are sharing photos 
and videos. The journalists have figured out ways to verify photos that come in 
with no words. Or words in a dialect they have never heard. And to do it almost 
instantly.

That’s what put the point on my pencil about why the way communities use 
websites and Facebook is missing the value of the medium. Communities are not 
using their technologies to increase the number of voices that are enabled, 
allowed, or invited to speak. 

Websites have webmasters. Only certain people can add or change information. 
The tone is “professional” meaning no personalities. The language is newsletter 
speak — proper but not too proper and nothing colloquial. Nothing too 
emotional. It is hard to figure out who wrote this piece or that. They all 
sound alike. On purpose. The goal is to set and achieve an acceptable norm. 
Something that no one will be embarrassed by.

That isn’t personal communication. Fiction is more real than nonfiction because 
it brings to life the voices of specific personalities. Dialogue is allowed to 
communicate more than the meaning of words. If it is whitewashed or edited to 
meet the norm, it is no longer expressive. No longer individual. No longer 
inclusive. Everyone sounds the same.

Years ago I was working on a website for a community that allowed members to 
post blog posts long before they were moved in. People posted all sorts of 
things. A report on workday cleaning the local streets and doing broom dances. 
The group trip to the bowling alley. Recipes. Saying goodbye to their aged dog. 
I fell in love with the community while reading those posts and posting 
pictures. They were having fun and I felt like I knew them. A community dinner 
would feel familiar. Unfortunately, they haven’t kept it up since they moved 
in. 

All that is the long way around to explaining why I think Mosaic, as one 
example, is important for communities, particularly those over 25-30 people. 
There has to be a way to share information and create experiences that is 
spontaneous and inclusive. People have to be allowed/enabled to use their words 
(as we now tell two-year-olds) to say whatever they want to say. To not have it 
filtered through a team or the facilitator or a survey. And others have to 
learn to hear those voices and understand them as they are — not as translated 
by the person writing the newsletter or maintaining the website or facilitating 
the meeting.

I’ve been working with Sean Davey on Mosaic. The software has been around and 
used by many communities but the user interface was still at a level that 
required a lot of learning before being able to fully use it. After months of 
work, I still don’t know everything it does. I’m trying to write instructions 
for users and that is when you really learn what you don’t know. What connects 
to what?

Essentially, Mosaic is a relational database that ties every kind of 
information a community could possibly generate into a network so it is 
accessible from many different directions. But it is still so easy to use that 
any member of a community can find things and more importantly, make entries 
themselves, in their own voice. Households, people, cars, bicycles, pets, room 
reservations, events, movies to lend, restaurants to recommend, meal plans, 
recipes, workshare tasks, financial accounts, and more. Communities can 
activate the modules they wish to use starting simply with recording people and 
contact information in the first meeting to the most complex operations after 
5+ years. 

All the modules can be activated as needed and each can have its own level of 
availability. Each one can be public so non-residents can see them or 
restricted to residents. Each can be limited to read-only or full access. The 
Accounting module, for example, can be limited to entries by the 2-3 people who 
keep the books and pay bills. Signing up for workshare tasks can be open to 
everyone or managed by the workday coordinator. Everyone can contribute 
recipes, set up meetings, and record minutes and other documents. The calendars 
are unlimited. There is an internal newsfeed like Facebook’s. It can be 
internal social media and property management all a the same time.

And all the features are in one program so there is no need to have 14 
passwords or be confronted by a different screen design or terminology as you 
change modules.

I have Sean’s relationship diagram for the software and it is huge. On the 
screen, you can only see one small part at a time. In order to be able to see 
the “whole picture” I dug out my poster printing software so I could print a 
large bulletin board-size image that was legible. I enlarged it to the size of 
12 sheets of 8.5 x11” paper. The text was still too small to read! I ran out of 
time so I haven’t yet found out how large it is in print.

But the important point I want to make is that it allows each person to be each 
person. And it doesn’t overload the 2-3 who are approved to enter information. 
It enables inclusion without requiring everyone to feed through one voice to 
have things posted. Or to spend months learning the relationship diagram. Or 
knowing any special languages. 

It’s an amazing opportunity to use technology for more than standardization.

Sharon
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Sharon Villines
Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC
http://www.takomavillage.org