If the election of President Obama, the political turmoil in Iran and the death of pop-icon Michael Jackson have anything in common, it is that they have shown us that Web 2.0 is well and truly entrenched within modern culture and social communication. It has taken over a decade for this new revolution to take hold, but it is now undeniable that social networking, communication, and user-created content is the basis of most of our web activity as we move into 2010.
The question that has been asked many times in the past, and will be asked here again, is what then is Freemasonry as a whole doing to embrace this technological evolution? Is it taking advantage of this new user-centered experience that the web has become? Surely, as a fraternity, it should be well placed culturally to do just that...
The true story is a bit less clear, and indeed what is undeniable is that Freemasonry as a collective whole is only just start to emerge out of the shadows of the Web 2.0 juggernaut and finding its feet. It really has only been in the last few years that any serious experiments and efforts have taken place, and I would argue that it is only within the last three years that any real headway has been achieved. What I want to do then is have a look at the various avenues that are available as of today, and what avenues we may be able to explore in the future. Building upon my earlier article on Freemasonry in Second Life, we're going to survey the landscape of Masonic cyber-culture and hopefully introduce you to some new places and ideas along the way.
Firstly, I don't want to get bogged down in defining just what 'Web 2.0' means - there are certainly many available explanations and Wikipedia is always a good place to start (as well as being a fantastic example in its own right!). Added to this, some of the things I will be talking about, such as forums and messageboards, are not technically Web 2.0 but are still worth discussing here. Suffice to say that the main basis of such technologies centres around user-created content and the facilitation of social communication. In more colloquial terms, it is giving the internet back to the people and using it to create community and collective identity.
This quick summation is clearly a gross over-simplification - but it will certainly suffice what the purposes of this series of articles, and indeed is the definition that I am using. What we will be looking at then are Masonic blogs, wikis, social networks, and other forms of collective communication that have emerged over the last few years and examining how they have benefited our organisation. I will be doing this over a series of articles using the title 'Freemasonry 2.0', an obvious play on words - although I do realise that Freemasonry itself has gone through many changes over its long history!
What I want to begin with then is just a very quick overview of how some of these technologies are being used, before in later articles looking at particular examples more closely and also examining possible fresh approaches. To begin with, although not fundamentally a Web 2.0 technology, the most predominant and productive form of communication amongst online brethren has been the various forums and message boards that have always been around. Many of these have registered user numbers in the thousands, and are therefore quite active and good places to go to get many different opinions about Freemasonry from brethren all over the globe. It has to be said, that anybody with the view that Freemasonry is conducting some kind of vast collective conspiracy only has to spend a short amount of time on these forums to see that this just cannot be the case! There is plenty of disagreement and differing opinions that's for sure, in many instances it can even turn into the universally present internet phenomena known as flaming. But beyond all of this, which is common amongst all internet forums regardless of topic, we see here the truly global potential and bond that our fraternity engenders in its members. There is truly an impressive amount of community created amongst people you have never met, who meet under different jurisdictions, and who even have very different opinions - but we're all brought together because of our love and participation in this ancient tradition called Freemasonry.
Beyond these early forms of Masonic internet communication that still continue today, there began to develop a more personal approach to information dissemination - the web log, weblog, blog. Blogs are now so common place that even some of your pet animals have them (*rolls eyes*), but we often forget how recent a practice they really are. Masonic blogs run the entire gamut, from personal diary formats; to discussions on esoteric philosophy; Masonic history and architecture; news and events and so on. What began to occur here is that individual Freemasons, for the first time in history really, all were capable of putting forward their own personal take on what they were seeing and experiencing. Literally within minutes, anybody who could type on a keyboard and access the internet were able to begin disseminating their view on Freemasonry. Of course, this was used both for positive and negative agendas - and there are certainly many more anti-Masonic/NWO/Illuminati blogs out there then there are ones written by Masons themselves. Unlike the forums, this format of writing always feels much more personal and is also much less prone to in-fighting and long standing feuds because of it. If it was on the forums that we truly began to see and discuss the differences between Masonic jurisdictions and questions about Freemasonry could be answered, it was on the blogs that individuals were given a voice and an audience that rival many of the traditionally published books in recent years. Most recently, there has been a tendency for multiple blog writers to come together as collective sites and we will be discussing this more in the near future.
Probably the most impacting influence that Web 2.0 has brought to the table for Freemasonry so far has been through the social networking sites, and in particular through Facebook and increasingly so Twitter. I have written about my own experiences of using Facebook to connect with brethren upon moving to a new country, but the impact that such sites are having extends much further then this. Firstly, and most obviously, are the many groups created for and by Freemasons. As of today, there are two such groups that have close to 8,000 members in each (quite likely the same 8,000 members to a large degree!) and many others that have anywhere between 10 - 1,000 members. These groups are kind of an extension of the forums and message-boards, and in some ways do things worse then that older format, but there is a distinct advantage that they bring about; which is that they allow Freemasons to connect on a very personal level with each other if they so choose to. The difference between early forms of internet-based communication and social networks is that if you wish to you can allow other users quite literally into your 'world'. The profile activity that occurs on these sites provides an astonishing level of insight into an individual and their thoughts and lifestyle.
For brethren that know each other well, complete access can be given to these profiles - allowing you to bond over things that you may never otherwise have known you had in common, and also build up a true sense of community between brethren. This can even extend to brethren you do not know particularly well, but have only interacted with in an online context. I have a few individuals who I feel are trustworthy enough to have access to my personal profile even though we have never physically met - and I have only benefited from this connection and from being able to equally view their efforts and activities in return. Social networks such as Facebook have enabled us to connect as brethren to a degree that was very rarely achieved beforehand. It also allows you to stay connected to those who move away from you physically, and this aspect cannot be stressed enough as it is truly a remarkable advancement in the creation and maintenance of social communities of all kinds. In many ways, and it is a point that I first argued about two years ago now, these new social networks mean that we have nothing to worry about from lowering membership numbers. We are more connected and in communication with one another then ever before, a fact that has been very truly illustrated by the speed with which news about recent events regarding the Grand Lodge of Georgia spread throughout the Masonic community. Freemasonry is now truly a global fraternity where every jurisdiction is accessible instantly, and where opinions and expertise can be traded back and forth with ease. Our numbers may be in decline, but the strength of our fraternal ties is growing exponentially.
Indeed, we now even see some experiments in specifically Masonic social network sites - and I will be discussing a few of these in a subsequent post in this series - and it is heartening to see that such attempts are taking place; although if we are perfectly honest with ourselves they do have a very long way to go yet. But all in good time, and I hope that this short introduction will get you all thinking about how Freemasonry does and has used the internet, and how we might progress in these areas. If you haven't already, sign up a user account and let us know what you think on our forums. Over the next few weeks I will be looking at different categories of this expression individually in an attempt to give a solid and comprehensive overview of Masonic activity on the internet, because even though our implementation of this technology is often far from perfect we are certainly progressing in the right direction as a fraternity.
Coming up next time: Masonic social network sites - what are they, how are they being used, and are they worth becoming a part of? Stay tuned!
