Since I have been writing about information, language, communities and milieus for quite some time, and since other people have also recently been increasingly commenting more on a wide variety of related issues, I’ve decided I should focus my attention on an insight that just happened to me in an “AHA!” sort of way.
I think I will use this essay to allow myself to simply explore my own thoughts first, and then I may very well follow up on working out the theoretical foundations on other blogs (of course leaving a sort of “paper trail” of links back to this post).
To cut to the chase: I think of “community information” as distinct from “milieu information” particularly in one aspect — and that aspect is the presence of at least one institution in the “community” scenario, whereas no such institutional involvement occurs in the “milieu” setting. [1] One way of interpreting this would be to appeal to the notion of a “card-carrying” members in community settings. Alternatively, one could focus on the quasi-“complete” anonymity of participants in milieu settings.
In community settings, community participants agree to involve some kind of institution to facilitate order in some way (e.g. to “make sense”, provide context, organize information, etc.). In milieu settings, no such institution or organizing principle is involved. In this sense, milieu settings are relatively unpredictable, easy come, easy go, much like so-called “free” markets.
I have a hunch that one of the most problematic aspects to delineate in the explication of what sets milieu settings apart from community settings will be a clear and concise description the wide-ranging gamut of institutions which exist in the very complex world, more or less interwoven throughout human existence. Let me just provide a few examples to sketch out some of the ways institutions impact our lives on a daily basis.
Imagine any cash transaction taking place anywhere in the world — and let’s just zoom in and focus on whatever cash objects are involved. Let’s simplify it even further and focus on just those transactions involving just one “piece” of cash. I take it most people will have some concept of this cash being issued by some institution, and the institution sort of guarantees that the value of this piece of cash can be freely exchanged with other pieces of cash of equivalent value (and the value of each piece of such cash is obvious). Nevertheless, in the community setting (and in particular in this example in which a cash transaction occurs), the role of the institution(s) involved in the transaction are integral elements of the information related to transaction (e.g. including banking institutions, monetary regulators, etc.).
I could even imagine very extreme cases — such as the involvement of a variety of institutions whenever someone mentions a particular day or date on the calendar — but I think rather than delving into the details of such extreme cases, it would make more sense to provide another more mundane example most people are familiar with in their everyday experience.
As I mentioned last week (see “Technology (and Audience) Capture“), the currently booming “tech” world provides a plethora of institutions involved in managing vast communities of consumers of their products, services, including innumerable “free offers” and opportunities to be manipulated, controlled, propagandized to (and more!). You might even call it a world in which brave and naive consumers are suckered not even just day in and day out, but even every single second (maybe even many times over from millisecond to millisecond).
In contrast, milieus are unconstrained, uncontrolled, unmanipulated — they are simply (more like) free markets.
Ultimately, the distinction between milieus and communities boils down to whether participants are willing to agree to being constrained by (at least one) controlling institutions, which will ultimately constrain the behavior, communications, language, free speech, etc. Anyone unwilling to be constrained this way will orient themselves towards the freedom to move freely throughout milieus. Such freedom-lovers will tend to refrain from constraining themselves by signing on to agreements, binding contracts, etc.
Socio Business blog 