The global rise of localism

Couldn't resist the grandeur of the title, forgive me.

An article in the Economist suggests that the internet, despite its promise of increasing our reach throughout the globe, may in fact be limiting our horizons.

First, I will describe the research used to reach this startling conclusion, then I will offer my analysis of how that likely came to be, and then we'll finish up with a more general bit.

The research tracked baby names, specifically the frequency of names within geographies. What they noticed was an increase in localization of names that corresponded with the rise of the internet. They speculate that this tendency to choosing names already common within a geographic regions may be evidence of a broader trend toward a more local view of the world.

I would suggest that social networking sites, with their promise of keeping you connected with far-flung friends from long ago, actually succeed in promoting something of a ceaseless conversation among local friends. I have witnessed many people (supposedly working, since I've witnessed this at work) spending hours on social networking sites, gossiping not with their long-lost best friend in Anchorage, but instead with the mother of the children that live across the street. It seems that the internet has allowed people to become more aware of their local community and that function has trumped its global reach.

This is not entirely surprising. After all, for millennia we have lived in small, local communities that were generally tight nit. (For better and for worse!) Then, the industrial revolution happened, shifting the center of population towards large, unconquerable cities. You could never know everyone in your city, but you might be able to know everyone on your block. So as things changed, they stayed the same. Then, the suburban diaspora happened. The exodus of people from communal living in cities to free-standing, self-supporting homes located miles from community gathering places and traversed, not on foot or in communal mass transit, but individually by car, finally broke apart communities. People who grew up in suburbia rarely feel a particular attachment to their community; indeed, that is one of the greatest complaints about it.

But social networking (and the internet, in general) has allowed people to re-commune, even as our physical geography and topography discourage it, we finally have in the medium of the internet, a means of conquering suburbia and submitting it to our collective desire for a comprehensibly small community. It is little surprise then, that finally given a tool to allow us to do what we had done for centuries before, we should return to a more natural, comfortable state.

The internet is still a wonderful place for people to expand their horizons, its just that most people, given the choice of travelling the world or flying their long-lost cousins in for a family reunion, will choose the latter. As for me, I'm still longing to taste French wine while sitting fashionably at a Parisian cafe, watching the people go by. And when I tire of that, there are over two hundred countries left to visit, each with its appeal.