The Forum: a Social Commons

We require "spaces" to meet; separation is a form of control and dis-coordination.

We are starved for connection and information; our commons have been hollowed out and our third spaces are for-profit.

Our communications are fragmented across a dozen platforms that do not inter-operate; the solution cannot be to add another.

A forum is not a message board, although it can be.

The forum is the medium; and what is inside us - that we need to express, that others want to hear - is the message.

The message can span media; but we must be intentional in order to resist fragmentation.

What causes a Forum to die?

A forum is dead when nobody is paying attention anymore.

For a forum to live, it must be a reliable source of audience.

It requires constant energy to keep a forum alive.

"Astroturf" is the process of transforming money into attention; this is the energy that can keep an artificial conversation alive.

A forum can live for free when it generates surplus energy and recaptures some of that energy to perpetuate itself.