Living in a Digital Frontier Town

[Note to self: never try to launch a blog just before a series of major projects get under way.  This is the start of my do-over.]

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I wanted to be a buffalo hunter on the digital frontier.  But that’s not really me right now, and that’s okay.

Let me ‘splain:

Fans of David Milch’s brilliant Deadwood are familiar with that late and lamented series’ meta-narrative: Deadwood was an exploration of how civilization grows out of the uncivilized chaos of the frontier.  Through the life of the series, Milch hinted and squinted at the sequence of steps that led to a community’s rise in the howling wilderness:

Al Swearengen: “Where were they when Dan and me were chopping trees in this gulch, hands all blistered, buck-tooth f__ing beavers rolling around in the creek, slapping their tails on the water like we was hired entertainment?”

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Ellsworth: Well, Ma’am, I’ve got myself a workin’ gold claim.

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Clell: No law at all in Deadwood? Is that true?
Seth: Bein’ on Indian land.
Clell: So then you won’t be a marshal?
Seth: Takin’ goods there to open a hardware business. Me and my partner.

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Sol: Looks like we’re in business, huh?

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Al: Well, anyways, this is it.  What we spoke about before, this puts it to the test.
Seth:  Alright.
Al: Informal municipal organization.  Not government.  No, that would mark us rebellious.  But structure enough to persuade those territorial [people] in Yankton that we’re worthy enough to pay them their f___ing bribes.

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Wolcott: “The operations of the old Aurora and Keet’s mines and a number of smaller adjoining claims are now entirely consolidated, accessed through the former Hidden Treasure property. . . . With purchase of the claim formerly operated by the Manuel brothers, we will control save one—-the Garret property—-every considerable deposit now discovered. . . .”

—

Martha: I hope I’m…adequate to guiding my son’s studies—I believe I am.  But a child in solitude cannot find his gift for society.
Alma: What do you propose?
Martha: That I teach the camp’s children.

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Jack:  My interest, to be direct, is in buying your building.
Joanie: What do you want to use it for?
Jack:  A theater. My troupe will season in this camp.

Or to look at the frontier succession through another famous, if rather oversimplified, approach: that of Frederick Jackson Turner’s famous essay, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History“:

The Atlantic frontier was compounded of fisherman, fur trader, miner, cattle-raiser, and farmer. Excepting the fisherman, each type of industry was on the march toward the West, impelled by an irresistible attraction. Each passed in successive waves across the continent. Stand at Cumberland Gap and watch the procession of civilization, marching single file–the buffalo following the trail to the salt springs, the Indian, the fur trader and hunter, the cattle-raiser, the pioneer farmer–and the frontier has passed by.

The point here that I’m stealing from Deadwood and from Turner’s frontier thesis is that it is no huge stretch to see any given point on the frontier as evolving through stages from wilderness to exploration to capitalization to cultivation.  The wild, then the explorers and trappers, then the traders, then frontier outposts, then rough towns, then the trappings of “culture:” schools, libraries, and the theater.

The digital frontier, it could be argued, moves in similar waves: first, the coders and innovators; then the early adopters; then, as things become a bit safer, the commercial interests; finally, wider, settled acceptance.  Or to go with Everett Rogers’ “diffusion of innovation” succession: innovators; early adopters; early majority; late majority; laggards.

This pattern has certainly been seen in the diffusion of digital services like blogs, Facebook, and Twitter: the service is encoded; a few early adopters start playing with it, sharing with their other early adopter friends; word gets out and more people start joining in; enough people get involved and platforms get stable enough that commercial interests start sniffing around.  In fact, at a conference I attended earlier this year, a speaker mentioned something along the lines of, “Once Chevrolet and Marriott show up on Twitter, you know it’s time to move on to the next technology.”

So why bring all this up?  Because, as I said at the outset, I once aspired to hunt buffalo on the digital frontier.  I liked to picture myself as a guy out ahead of the masses, helping blaze the digital trails others would follow. But that’s not really my place.  I’ve come to realize that I’m not so much the innovative frontiersman as I am a guy several steps down the continuum of succession, living in a pretty well-established digital frontier town. Not out there in front, but also a good bit further out there than most folks. Say it’s the St. Louis of 1846; to the settled people back east, I’m on the edge of the howling frontier wilderness.  But to the real frontiersmen and women further west, I’m one of those folks back in the last big city.  I mean, there are parks!  Gas lights!  A Mercantile Library Association, for all love!  I’m not soft like the dandies back in New York City, but I ain’t out with a horse and rifle miles from nowhere hunting down stray code, either.

And that’s okay.  Mid-19th-century St. Louis was a hub of activity, pulling the trappings of civilization out from the east and learning all it could of the unknown areas to the west.  Since circumstances dictate it, settling in at the crossroads on the edge of the digital frontier is a pretty good place to be for a while.  Since I don’t really have the time right now to get out on the bleeding edge, I’ll stay on my scratch-built front porch, reading my dime novels (you know, like Wired and Fast Company) and dreaming of the day that I’ll pack my rifle and join one of the exploring expeditions heading into the digital frontier.

For now I can take advantage of the town’s civilized ways–its strong infrastructure and museums and libraries–but I’d be crazy not to keep an eye on reports from the explorers coming in from the digital west to see when and where my own excursions might get under way.

And who knows, while I’m here maybe I can send some useful information back east to “civilization,” too.