How are we judging value of on/offline interactions?

Published October 18, 2008 @ 08:31AM PT

I am curious about how people are judging the value of value with regard to deciding what is and is not good about Internet community interaction. When we're trying to figure out if shifts in community behavior are "good" or "bad" with regard to the Millennial generation, what rubric is being used to determine those values?

For example:

If, 15 years ago, my mother were to attend a book club frequented by 8 regular participants at the local library, the resultant conversation would have only been as intelligent as the most intelligent participant - or it would have been made as made contextually interesting as the most interesting person in attendance.
If I have a book club where the interaction is based on Facebook, and that conversation is 30-participants strong, and they all come from somewhat different demographics, but we don't meet face to face, it is assumed that something is to be gained from the diversity of thought but something else is lost on the lack of face-to-face interaction.

So I ask:

How are we assessing what is gained versus what is lost?
Is there an existing metric for this assessment?

Of course, an ideal [book club] scenario might be that several smaller regional book groups connect face-to-face locally, and then connect with the other groups in an on-going, national/global conversation with other smaller groups online so as to diversify insight based on a larger pool of backgrounds. Further, when making arguments or participating in discussions, the online exchange makes it easier to share pertinent links, resources, etc. But then I say "of course" without putting some more thought into value metrics. How can I be so sure that this hybrid solution is an optimal one?

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Author

Alex is a freelance journalist, activist, and online community management consultant based in Boston and Portland, Maine. He currently serves as executive editor of MakeSomethingHappen.net, where he writes about online organizing and the power of collective action.