Glass Walls
Our world keeps getting larger. Whether you want to be or not, you are connected with what’s happening on the other side of the world.
Sometimes it’s too much. Sometimes we revert back to what makes us comfortable - what reminds us of our story of earlier humanity, when our worlds seemed small. After all, small worlds contain fewer people, fewer contexts, and less intensity.
The internet is in a unique position to craft small worlds. Coincidentally, a collection of millions of small worlds can be seen as a large world, but is that the truth?
Maybe even within the large ‘communities’ of facebook, twitter, and reddit, the small worlds inside are the ones that matter - the subreddits, the hashtags, the cohort of people you see regularly.
The problem with internet-based small worlds is that they exist inside glass walls, where the outside can peer in and (at least occasionally) cause chaos.
Maybe opaque walls are better, protecting your world from outside observers. But how many worlds have you discovered because you passed by a glass wall and saw what was inside?
Maybe that glass walls are necessary for connection.