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The social jigsaw.

Social /'sōSHəl/ adjective

1. of or relating to society or its organization.
2. needing companionship and therefore best suited to living in communities.

Social is a series of shared experiences.

We join networks to communicate and share data with our peers. We may gather in subnets (communities or groups) to better manage resources but there is something more fundamental:

Social is building a jigsaw.

Social is sharing little pieces of you so that others might fit them together and see the full picture - our individual jigsaw, but there is the wider scope.

We identify our corners: our starting points, a base from which to grow.

We find our edges: the connections to others and work out how they fit to establish a social framework.

We recognise shapes and patterns so that we might see how we can build this framework together.

We might think that we are imposing our own structure on the network, defining our own topology but, in reality, we are trying to find our place and, in doing so, uncovering the bigger picture of which we are all a piece.

We don't have the box lid when we start out so don't know how it is all supposed to look. In fact, everyones part of the jigsaw looks a little different even though we are sharing some of the pieces.

Flux

Our jigsaws are never finished as we are always able to add more pieces, move sections we have built to establish their proper place and take pieces out when we realise that they do not belong.

Using social we are organising new communities beyond the influence of politics or geography, outside of the old narratives.

This post originally appeared on Google+ here.

Image by craftivist collective

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