Seth Godin in this post ‘Clusters‘ makes the point that while the Industrial Age expanded national broadcasting media to an uncredible point, there is a return to the local cluster: local marketing, locally grown vegetables, a sense of community. At the same time however we have never been more globally connected: working for a global corporation, talking to people at the other end of the globe every day.
This strange situation of both a concentration of the local with an expansion of our horizon beyond the national to the super global is an interesting contradiction of the Collaborative Age. Globally connected and locally aware. Globally active and locally committed.
Quite a strange situation indeed and I can understand that some feel a bit unsettled by this new situation. Yet it is obviously by building those links between the local and the global that we will let the value of the Collaborative Age emerge. It is by overcoming this contradiction that we will find our place in the Collaborative Age.
