Where is Everybody

Clay Shirky, in his book Here Comes Everybody, discusses the rise of the internet and new communication tools. He details how these advances in technology didn't directly cause people to do anything, but weakened or eliminated barriers. Some of these barriers were finding a group with similar interests, the cost to publish something, and even the difficulty in assembling a group of people. As these barriers came down, people took advantage of the new ease and started working together to make incredibly large and complex things (i.e. Wikipedia or Linux).

I have seen some of these changes growing up. When in elementary school I had to call someone or go to their house to try to do anything with them. In high school the use of e-mail was more prevalent, instant messaging was commonplace and people could now text each other to set up events, but their groups largely consisted of the people they interacted with from day to day (especially since MySpace was frowned upon by parents). As i started college I found more people using Facebook and liking pages where they now could meet people online with similar interests.

However I don't personally know anyone that met some "friends" on Facebook and then later got together for a party or an evening of fun. These cyber friends are largely non-existent. People still hang out with the people they interact with on a day to day basis, while they never meet the friend that likes all the same things they do, but lives across the country. The cost of travel still inhibits these people from meeting. While the people with similar interests in the same area generally meet from another individual or an organization sporting a club. The dropping of cost barriers in communication allow me to "meet" new people online, but its real help is in facilitating planning with my group of close friends, and things are likely to remain that way until the travel barriers also drop.