Different Types of Communities

Communities of Purpose are a third type of online community, after "communities of interest" and "communities of practice". These differ from the others by focusing on a common purpose or goal, for example a political cause, rather than on a shared interest or field of expertise.

To make these communities more effective, Nova says we need to "merge the functionality of groupware and knowledge management with emerging community tools for social networking, blogging, and wikis". Yes indeedy! And make it free, easy and fun while you're at it!

I wonder how much of the hype about the potential of online communities is a matter of failing to see the forest for the trees-- I mean, when you consider what motivated people are willing to do to accomplish something they really believe in, does it really make it so much more powerful now that people can post messages to a website? Sure, it's accessible everywhere, to anybody, but so what? What matters is the organization, that is, the people. People can join organizations any time they want. Aren't the motivated people already tying themselves to trees, rather than wasting their days having bull sessions with their internet buddies?

Brain Activity During "Aha" Moments

WebMD Link

Apparently the right frontal lobe seems to be important during "Aha Moments", showing a marked spike in activity at the moment when you "get it". The spike in high-frequency brain waves is preceded by a 1.5 second-long period of low frequency waves. This seems to act to "open up the gates" to allow the burst of activity that follows. Scientists liken this to closing your eyes when trying to remember someone's name-- except that in this case the brain is blocking out visual input just to the right hemisphere.

Let's hear it for modern scientistics!

So can we say that if we want to do some difficult reasoning, we should focus on the front right part of our brain? Maybe close our right eye? Hmm, it does seem to feel different to scratch my head on the right versus the left...maybe if I rub the left part of my forehead I could do math!