Since the time of BBS’s and up until the social media of today, people have been exchanging opinions using digital tools. My first encounters with discussion forums was positive and I’ve always been an eager participant in countless exchanges of opinions.

These days when most dialog happens in the context of 140 characters (or there about) I feel that something has changed. We no longer exchange opinions and listen to differing points of view. Countless “discussions” on Twitter look more like those debating religious topics. The parties involved only continue the discussion in a hope to convince the other side of “what is right”. I have seldom seen a twitter debate where a participant has said: “OMG you’re right! I see your point clearly”.

Did we see that in the old days of the bulletin board systems? I think the answer to some degree is yes. The old systems had a focus on content and discussions, whereas the new breed of systems have a focus on publicity, visibility and popularity. These characteristics does frame how we discuss in social media. The incentives are different and this makes for a different climate.

In the end it makes the culture of software developers even more focus on trends, hype and the next big thing. All of which are good thing, however it becomes a problem when all focus is on things that are still to come. While the present gets little attentions.

You can see this trend influencing Open Source development. Everyone is trying desperately to create The Next Big Thing, while few bother to contribute to existing software. This has been adressed in the front-end community where jQuery has reigned supreme for a long time. Developers would rather focus on creating new libraries solving similar problems, as opposed to contributing to jQuery. I think this behavior is due to the change in how we communicate with each other.

I’m not saying that there should be no focus on pushing things forward and doing new stuff. I’m not saying it’s always best to contribute to existing OSS projects.

What I am saying is that the way we interact also shapes what we create and how we collaborate.