Over the past few years, there has been an email forward responding to the various calls for boycotts of Israeli products. These boycotts were in response to the “situation” over there, claiming Israel to be the obvious villain, and calling for boycotts in order to stop supporting the Israeli economy. The email forward responded to this by listing all the innovations brought forward by Israel, tech, medical, industrial, engineering, etc, and saying “as long as you’re going to boycott some Israeli products, why not go whole hog and boycott everything we’ve ever developed” which leads the previously-assumed-to-be-logical boycott to abstain from such things as the polio vaccine and other vitally important products (here’s an article discussing Israeli Medical Technology Innovations).

There are two sides of a coin - or two edges of a sword - that I’d like to dispell. The one side proudly claims that all these innovations are proof of some kind of Israeli superiority when it comes to innovations; the other side seeks to drudge up various flaws in the Israelis to compensate for an envy of that supposed superiority.

I believe both sides of that coin/sword are wrong. It has nothing to do with the Israelis being a people with innovative genes, and everything to do with the Israelis as a people who had no choice but to build a culture of innovation, incentivized by innovation’s alternative: annihilation.

So, yes, at this point, innovation is deep within the Israeli culture. But it has been inspired by a painful history of constant threat. Is the ongoing threat and struggle a worthy price to pay for the pride of innovation? Can the culture of innovation continue without the constant threat of destruction? And more importantly, what can be learned from this particular instance of innovation that can be gleaned and modeled by other peoples globally?

In a sense, when there is absolutely no choice BUT to innovate, both laziness AND perfection tend to give way to effectiveness. This is an interesting aspect to this discussion. Anyone who has been to Israel might be surprised at the level of “rough edges” that exist at the highest levels of development. This shows that there are two psychological/emotional struggles when it comes to innovation: the first pair is the motivation vs laziness issue. When you MUST act, you act without question, without procrastination, without indecision. You simply act. But what might be less obvious is that, because you also have a deadline (i.e. “the enemy will be here in 3 hours” or “we have years of drinking water remaining”) you become instinctively dismissive of details that do not produce an actual result. This is the 2nd pair: effective vs perfection, or, knowing when something is good enough.

i was thinking about social software recently..

i realized something interesting about it; something like myspace, for example, has its own subculture. people talk about myspace, using myspace lingo, referring to myspace things, and portraying myspace behavior.

the whole idea about social software is that it is the digital version of communities, right?

i think i disagree on the 100% transferability from offline to online.

social software is not for ‘online communities’, but ‘online subcultures’. the reason this is different, is because people act in the specificsubculture-way only while on the subculture’s website.

this is an important difference when compared with real-world subcultures.

for example, take ‘hippies’ or ‘punks’. each has a certain characteristic way of living, way of dressing, way of talking. these behaviors are more prominent when surrounded by others of the same subculture, even if only due to shared knowledge and experience in that subculture’s ways.

but when one member of a group (hippie or punk), walks into a deli in the center of town, even if that person tones down the amount of his/her subculture’s traits s/he displays, there are still aspects of it which s/he cannot hide, such as dress or hair.

it’s that one point in which online subcultures differ. you can be part of an online subculture, without ever having to experience ’standing out’ in front of people who are NOT part of that subculture.

there’s something very big in this point, when it comes to thinking about social software, and where it’s going in the future. this one difference, i believe, is a key to further developments and innovations in the social software genre.

I’m reading this book now called The American Soul by Jacob Needleman… great book, I won’t go into detail about it, except to bring this one quote, which I think is great to think about it in relation to thinking about social software:

If government is the art form of America, if the Constitution is the masterpiece of this art, then there must lie within the process of its formation lessons that we shall need to learn as the modern era spills into the new millienium. The art of the future is the group. The intelligence and benevolence we need can only come from the group, from associations of men and women seeking to struggle against the impulses of illusion, egoism and fear.

Really, I don’t want to get into the whole “where is America going” bit.. I’m mostly focusing on how this author is claiming that what is most unique about America’s form of government, is that it’s based on the group. I find this a very interesting point to overlay on my thinking about social software, where it’s going, what does it point to for future development, etc.