Value in the Network

Last Tuesday, Shveta, Matt and I attended BayCHI, a monthly gathering of area HCI folk to hear a couple of talks. Since Matt had a longer drive back up to San Francisco, we bailed on the second presentation so we had a chance to talk ourselves. However, the first one was thought provoking.

Shannon Clark—who very recently launched nela.mobi (as in, “Never Eat Lunch Alone”)—gave a somewhat confusing presentation on the economic value in network structure. Visually, the slides were a lot like what Eli Blevis would promote, using lots of images to illustrate. However, it was never clear what the connection was between another of Clark’s projects—Meshwalk—and his hypothesis that value resides not in an object but in how that object is positioned in a network.

A Meshwalk is “a conference which is held in motion, outside, documented and captured digitally.” (This is something Marty would love.) The idea is to get people out of their element, participating in the world, and using the world as exemplars for whatever is being discussed. Of most interest to me is that a big group walking forces small group conversations. The driver forcing the small groups is the limitation of physical proximity, as it is difficult to have more than 3-5 people in conversation together while walking down a path. The walks include a few waypoints, where the entire group reconvenes to hear a short presentation to stimulate walking conversations (and to make sure the stragglers catch up). Everything is documented, mostly in pictures which can tell a story of what the collective found interesting. The last one in San Francisco on March 20th included some support from Twitter, which created a meshwalk group to which tweets could be directed and followed. The next one is being planned for October 19th.

Meshwalks might be a very interesting tool of design, sort of a combination of focus group and photo ethnography. Lead a bunch of different such groups down the same path with the same topic of discussion, and see what patterns emerge. The documentation could be further augmented using mini-messaging tools, like Twitter or Jott, which are accessible through cell phones.

The main point of Clark’s talk, according to the title, was to put forth the notion that networks themselves are the things of value. The example he repeatedly used was a gold bar; the object is only worth something because it is at the center of a network that craves it. It is in the transaction where the bar gains its value, not something implicit in the bar itself.

The argument wasn’t very well crafted, and that particular example is not the best. As Matt pointed out in our own little Meshwalk to discuss the talk, there is a difference between limited and unlimited resource. A gold bar is craved in large part because it is scarce. Someone taking my gold bar would have it while I would have nothing. In virtual property, like music files, the resource is something that can be copied. Craving a virtual object is not about transfer of possession. The gold bar is a poor example of Clark’s point because its scarcity gives it an inherent property and its physicality limits ownership.

Although the presentation was too abstract, there is a lot about what Clark implies that is appealing to me. Viewing value as situated in a bunch of relationship is exactly where I believe relational-cultural theory can impact design. The strength of a designed object is not the object itself but the relationships it cultivates. Those relationships may be between people or between objects. Clark’s emphasis on traditional transaction (i.e. sales) as the metric of economic value is also limiting, as social and cultural capital are equally important.