I've long thought this - the reason why I helped create netoCiety in the first place (netoCiety is a combination of the words Networked Society which I in turn first read about in Howard Castells, The Rise of the Network Society). Pretty obvious stuff you would say and I'd agree but that is not the point of this post.

I was reminded of my long-standing beliefs by this excellent post from Stuart Brown over at Wisdump entitled The Ebb and Flow of Social Networking. It observes the phenomenon of "countless communities online that have grown, peaked, and slowly faded into obscurity. Like a roving band of wildebeest, it seems communities arrive en masse, graze for a while, and move on to pastures anew."

He plots a graph, not unlike Gartner's Technology Hype Cycle series that has a peak and a plateau but unlike Gartner, it has a decline. This might lead one to believe that this cycle of birth, death and rebirth has no cumulative effects. I'm not saying that is what is being said but my point is that the cumulative effects of all this luvvly jubbly web 2.0, social networking, community and Enterprise 2.0 stuff on the Internet is giving rise to something in the long term, as fundamental as what was postulated in the book by Howard Castells. That is, aside from the ebb and flow we see in the present time. I've tried clumsily to represent my simple point below:

Something revolutionary is happening! Now let me get off my cloud and start some serious weekend partying