Technology both helps and hinders community.
It helps in the following ways:
1) Accessibility. Technology allows everyone in the world to participate. You don’t have to be in the same room. You don’t have to wait for a pause in the discussion to participate. You don’t have to be extroverted to jump in. You can join in the specific discussions you like. You can ask the difficult questions you couldn’t ask in person.
2) Longevity. Community activities are (usually) stored indefinitely. They create a body of knowledge. They create a sum of previous stories and shared experienced. This is powerful for communities filled with tacit knowledge easily lost when members depart. You can use this to rapidly improve the skills/abilities of members.
3) Nudges. Technology can automatically remind people to participate in communities. We can use technology to establish reminders, notifications, and other nudges to get people into the regular habit of participating in their community. From the moment members join, you can nudge members to participate in the right discussions in the right way via copy and tech tweaks.
4) Influence. Technology allows you to have clear influence over what the community. You can add/remove discussions, highlight members and material you want people to pay attention to, and establish the rules for participation more easily than you could with an offline community. You can create an easy narrative for the community via content.
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