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The OurLaurelhurst.org Experiment
From Our Laurelhurst Wiki
OurLaurelhurst.org is, in part, an experiment. It is designed to bring a sense of community back to a physical space.
Technology has increasingly enabled us to pull away from eachother. The car allowed us to live in a different community than we worked. A home is much more often the place where your stuff is than where your friends are. The people in our neighborhoods are easy to ignore as we depend upon them for very little.
The telephone and the Internet mean that we can live far from those we love, and work very far from where we live. The Internet and catalogs mean that we can get products and services from around the globe, frequently without ever interacting with a single person.
These technologies all have very good sides to them, but they do tend to leave us drifting in physical space a bit.
Our neighborhood is, in many senses, our roots. It is where we choose to keep our stuff, yes, but is also how we feel protected, how we feel valuable, and how we feel part of something bigger than us that doesn't have to do with earning a paycheck.
OurLaurelhurst.org is a place where we can do many things. It is a place where we can share our common history. It is a place where we can connect with those who live nearby. It is a place where we can inform, and express, and gossip, when we are too busy to do it in real time, and, more to the point, too busy to meet everyone face to face.
Imagine knowing every potential babysitter in your neighborhood. Imagine other people contributing to the history of your house (including, importantly, those that lived there before); imagine buying a house with the rich history already documented. Imagine reading the news about just your neighborhood. Imagine hearing (not reading) people talk about your neighborhood's current events, or its history.
This is all part of the vision of OurLaurelhurst.org. But the main vision is that there be a resource that we all can share. That we all can contribute to. That helps better define us as a single, rich, diverse community in real space.
Rob Shields
[edit] Related Links
- UsaToday.com: Beyond Kiwanis: Internet builds new communites
