Hello (Familiar) Stranger
The concept of Familiar Strangers may go some way to explaining why the backlash against YASN et al seems to be happening, but strangers can be helpful without being friends.
The Theory
The Familiar Stranger is a social phenomenon first addressed by the psychologist Stanley Milgram in his 1972 essay on the subject.
Some Familiar Strangers are more familiar than others. These are what are called "socio-metric stars" and they tend to be exceptional in appearance: exceptionally good-looking, exceptionally aggressive, exceptionally weird - exceptional.
Familiar Strangers are individuals that we regularly observe but do not interact with. By definition a Familiar Stranger (1) must be observed, (2) repeatedly, and (3) without any interaction. The claim is that the relationship we have with these Familiar Strangers is indeed a real relationship in which both parties agree to mutually ignore each other, without any implications of hostility. A good example is a person that one sees on the subway every morning. If that person fails to appear, we notice.
Change the setting, though, and their role changes. If you visit a strange city where you know no-one, and there see a Familiar Stranger, you are more likely to treat them as friends (unless they're exceptionally psychotic-looking). Equally, if there is an earthquake or a riot or a fire, Familiar Strangers become friends.
New research
Intel are now doing research at Berkeley on this phenomenon.
We believe that extensions to this [Familiar Stranger] relationship using small personal wireless object can allow individuals to more acutely gauge their social relationship to people, places, and crowds around them over time. We also believe that such a device is capable of encouraging community solidarity, even transitory solidarity, in places where it is currently difficult to build such ties.
But this is not YASN, Match.com or the like. They state:
we are not interested in designing a friend finder, matchmaking device, or system that explicitly attempts to convert our strangers into our friends. Strangers are strangers exactly because they are not our friends, and any such system should respect that boundary. Having strangers on our urban landscape is not a negative thing. On the contrary, the very essence of individual and community health of urban spaces intrinsically depends on the existence of strangers. Their complete removal would almost certainly be detrimental.
Friends and Colleagues
This makes a huge amount of intuitive sense to me. As Liz Lawley (of Corante) says:
it so succinctly sums up what troubles me about many of the social networking systems out there - that they explicitly attempt to convert our strangers into our friends, and that their developers seem resolute in their unwillingness to acknowledge the problems inherent in that approach.
This touches on two points for me, neither of which I'm particularly sure I can express. Ho hum.
First, a lot of the talk about YASN and all this social software stuff seems to be a little to binary about the notion of friends. There are a whole number of shades of greys involved in my listing the people I know, from complete strangers to enemies loathed and feared (not that many as it turns out) to close family and adored girlfriends. It is not an on-off thing either - I don't think I've blown a raspberry and said "you're not my friend anymore" since I was seven. Part of the power of the Familiar Stranger concept for me is that it explores one end of the known vs not known spectrum.
Which leads on to the second point. The one thing I am not (at the moment) interested in is meeting a whole load of potential friends and lovers. I may need to in the future (though fingers crossed I won't), but I'm not now. What if the context isn't friends? Just as disasters can turn Familiar Strangers into friends, couldn't the need to get some help on local schools for you child turn them into Advisors?
Links:
Thanks to
[ThanksDiablog for the link to Intel's research]
Intel Berkeley - research project
Stanley Milgram - website