possibility…

“As our ancestors evolved to live in groups, the hypothesis goes, they had to make sense of increasingly complex social relationships. Living in a community requires keeping tabs on who the group members are and what they are doing. What better way to spread such information than through storytelling?”

[From “The Secrets of Storytelling: Why We Love a Good Yarn” by Jeremy Hsu Mind & Brain (September 2008)]

I came across this article late last week while folks in our Facilitating Online Communities (FOC08) class discussed the mixing (crashing?) of technology and community. Hsu’s comment about increasingly complex social relationships and the need to keep tabs on community members felt apropos. In the modern world where we have truck-loads of tools to achieve the “keeping tabs” aspects of community, it’s easy to get caught up in the toys and forget the ultimate goal. I love that this course provides an opportunity to create a new community and to explore a truck-load of tools. I think that in a week or two, once we’ve all become more familiar with the assorted tools, the real glue of community–storytelling–will go to work. It’s going to be a fun few months!