Note
Notes from Superhuge
18.07.26Published
When groups find one another
People can find one another online. What if groups could do the same?
- groups
- social software
- networks
- association
A small garden group needs timber for a few raised beds.
Around the corner, a workshop has offcuts it cannot use. A community kitchen nearby has vegetable scraps that could become compost. The garden will eventually have herbs and seedlings to give away.
These groups are close enough to hear the same church bell. Online, they may as well live on different planets. Maybe this is optimistic, but a gap like that looks more like an invitation than a limit.
A connection only appears when one person happens to be in two chats, remembers the right detail and makes an introduction at the right moment. That person is useful. The accident is fragile.
01 / Group
A group can introduce itself
A person can publish a profile. A company can publish a website. A group often has a chat link, an event page or a corner rented from a platform.
None of those lets the garden say, in its own place: we need timber; we have seedlings; this is where we are; this is who to ask.
The group does not need to pretend it has one mind. People disagree. Plans change. Somebody still has to decide what the group is ready to make visible. The useful step is simply giving that decision an address.
02 / Boundary
A door, not a glass house
Findable should not mean completely public. The half-finished plan, the disagreement about Saturday and the names of the people who quietly keep everything going can stay inside.
A group can choose one small thing that may cross the boundary. The need for timber. An invitation to the next open morning. A lesson about keeping slugs away without starting a tiny chemical war.
A feed makes activity visible. A door makes an exchange possible.
A good door carries context. It says what is needed or offered, who it is for, where it applies, when it stops being relevant and which person can answer the knock. Then it can close again.
03 / Exchange
Needs meet offers
Generic community discovery sounds nice until it produces a long list of groups with cheerful descriptions and nothing to do together.
The garden and workshop do not need matching profiles. One needs timber. The other has offcuts. That specific overlap is enough to begin a conversation.
The kitchen scraps may answer a different need. Later, the garden’s seedlings may become an offer. The connection is small, practical and allowed to expire. Nobody has to invent a marketplace for it.
Three rooms, a few doors
The inside stays with the group. Only a deliberate opening becomes available to others.
Garden
Stays inside
- Members
- Plans
- Context
Public doors
- Needs timber
- Offers seedlings
Workshop
Stays inside
- Members
- Tools
- Context
Public doors
- Offers offcuts
Kitchen
Stays inside
- Members
- Meals
- Context
Public doors
- Offers compostable scraps
What may cross
- Workshop → GardenOffcuts can answer the open need for timber.
- Kitchen → GardenCompostable scraps can become useful compost.
- Garden → Nearby groupsSeedlings can become a later offer.
The useful question is not only “do these groups sound alike?” It is “what can they do together, now?”
04 / Network
Many rooms
A network is not one room becoming infinitely large. It begins when smaller rooms open doors to one another.
It is strange how far the internet can feel from the world right outside the door. We can find almost anything online, yet three groups on nearby streets can remain invisible to one another.
The internet often makes a network by pulling everybody into one feed, one platform and one audience. The garden, workshop and kitchen do not need that. They have different members, habits and reasons for existing.
Web standards already know that a group can be an actor, and that actors can send things between inboxes and outboxes. That makes the technical shape plausible. It does not decide who may speak for a real group, what stays private or whether an introduction is wise.
When I think about Selfso, I keep returning to this possibility: could one Space expose a need or invitation to another without exposing everything inside? It cannot do that now. I am optimistic enough to think that one day it should. The boundary matters as much as the connection.
05 / People
People still make the introduction
Software can show that the workshop has wood and the garden needs it. People decide whether the wood is suitable, whether somebody can collect it and whether this is a sensible thing to do together.
Groups overlap. A person can belong to the garden and the kitchen. Some groups last years; others disappear after one summer. An invitation can expire. A member can say no. A door can remain closed.
That is not friction to automate away. It is where consent and trust live. The internet can make the opportunity less accidental without making the decision automatic.
06 / Door
Something crosses
The workshop makes its box of offcuts visible. The garden’s timber request is still open. A person from each group talks, checks the sizes and arranges a collection.
A week later, the wood is holding soil instead of gathering dust. The kitchen knows where its scraps can go. A few months after that, there may be seedlings at its door.
One group said what it needed. Another said what it had. Both knew where to knock.
Tim