Come together
In a virtual world, face-to-face communication still counts
ONE of the advantages of being part of a virtual organisation is that you get to choose when and where to work. At Common, not having an office, we keep in touch via Slack, or, when a serious discussion is called for, via conference call. The system works well, and we consider our virtualness a strength.
However, our end-of-year internal survey revealed an apparent contradiction. When asked what we liked most about being part of Common, almost all of us highlighted how much we enjoyed meeting up in person (something we do every couple of months). For all the benefits of our flexible ways of working, it seems that rubbing shoulders with our colleagues in the same physical space holds particular value.
For most people, virtual communication is a daily reality. We interact on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram with people we will never meet face-to-face. This certainly broadens our horizons (if not our political views). But despite media-fuelled speculation to the contrary, the virtual world is not about to replace the physical one. Recent studies suggest that a primary reason we use these tools is to reinforce existing physical relationships, or to help us come together with others in the real world.
Consider, for example, that the people we phone most frequently are the ones who live closest to us; that in online social networks such as Facebook, the number of friends diminishes with geographical distance; and that teenagers who text the most are also the ones who socialise the most in person.
As danah boyd, an expert on technology and society at Microsoft Research, puts it, “Most teens aren’t addicted to social media. If anything, they’re addicted to each other… They’re not allowed to hang out the way you and I did, so they’ve moved it online.” What goes for teens goes for the rest of us. In a fully virtual world, we’d all be missing out. At Common, many of our best ideas come out of our regular meet-ups. Being present brings out something special.
Some people still entertain the idea of the internet as some kind of virtual utopia, perhaps related to the thought that online nobody knows you’re a dog. It hasn’t really worked out that way, and there’s no sign that our social institutions are buying into it. Common may be a virtual organisation, but we’re still required by law to register a physical address. You can find that address at Companies House (it’s a co-working space run by Work.Life). Just don’t turn up expecting any of us to be there.
