The world has changed rapidly over the past few decades, and access to information is widespread and easier than ever. It has moved us in the direction of a new understanding of what communication is and can be. One of our big goals at ForWorld Thinking is advocating for and promoting cross-cultural communication, or global communication. Global communication long ago left the realm of simple one-way information sharing, but we are seeing now that it is also shedding the limitations of two-way dialogue and transcending into a space of virtual collaboration. One of the most exciting and now infamous features of the "Arab Spring" was the role social media played in connecting people and moving them into action. The tools we have at our disposal provide the opportunity to work together in real time with individuals from every corner of the globe. The possibilities are almost too much to process at the moment, but it is changing the way we think about communication.
The race everyone is in these days is figuring out the best ways to use these tools to bridge divides of all kinds and break down the remaining barriers to us becoming a true global community. Community is a word that can draw any number of wildly different definitions depending on who you ask, but I believe the key component of community is collaboration. In the past, the idea of community being a local thing made sense, because you could only collaborate with your neighbors. But now, with the internet having blown the doors wide open to cross-cultural, cross-generation, cross-everything collaboration, our idea of what constitutes community has to change as well. A community does not have to be based on race, generation, geography, or anything. It only has to be a group of individuals who come together to collaborate because they believe in something. Communities centered around ideas or passions collaborating, that is the new definition of communication.
The other great shift we are seeing and which we should all be embracing in our efforts to build a real global community is the multi-channel approach to communication. Online communities used to be separate, you were in the Myspace community, or the Facebook community, or a community that formed in a niche website's forums, or in an online gaming community. But now, communities have broken free from the restrictions of a single channel and instead use all channels to strengthen and consolidate themselves. That means the bond that holds the community together has to be a strong idea or passion, otherwise it would not be able to survive. The next step then is to figure out how to bring these smaller communities of ideas together into a global community. I imagine a giant virtual convention, or marketplace, where each community has its own booth, and the ideas and passions mix and mingle and communicate with one another. And these ideas and passions coming together, no matter how disparate any individual 2 may be, makes the whole global community stronger and more understanding by virtue of simply communicating. We need to keep moving away from segmentation and toward unity of purpose, even if we don't always agree (more on that next post). It is a lofty goal yes, but it is one we strongly believe in and we are determined to help work towards.
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