MO: Indeed, which we haven’t yet explored. And so connections and people and how they can connect, is something that has very much been part of your whole interest along the way. It’s been a theme, I can hear.

RD: Yes, absolutely.

MO: Your present interests, where do they reside?

RD: Very diverse. I’m interested in networks, which are a very critical perspective for me. There are a number of different perspectives to the networks. One is the technological networks which underpin connectivity. Another is the social networks between people. Another is the networks between organisations: economic networks. Yet another is the whole network of ideas which we are seeing flow, now are enabled by the Web 2.0 technologies. Tthere is also a very strong parallel between all of these and the networks of our brains.

I am deeply interested in social networks. Social network analysis is something I spend a lot of time on. Web 2.0 is a phrase that some people like and some people don’t like, but what I find extraordinary about the current phase of the internet is that it is an enabler of connectivity and participation that is truly transformative. That’s what I am looking at and spending time on. How the relationships enabled by the new internet technologies are giving value to all of us.

MO: And I can see that there are parallels certainly, that that would allow for a great deal of in depth analysis, which we don’t have time for here, so if I could go straight in and ask you, about the connecting spaces, if you can tell me about these. You referred to these in your keynote speech in Sydney for Hothouse, as, what was the word you used?

RD: Interstices. The interstices. What is interstitial is what is between. Our media is now more and more relevant in more and more domains.

Media encompasses not just our traditional newspapers and television and so on. Media is the plural of medium. It is the channels whereby we get information. There has been an enormous shift in those channels, from primarily one-to-many and broadcasts, to now the often predominant mode of media being many-to-many. It is between other individuals.

It is very much a relationship basis, a network basis-who we are as individuals as positioned within our social network and the people we know and the people we communicate with. And so this idea of the interstitial is positioning between these relationships.

I think this is a very relevant way of thinking about Myspace for example. It was bought by one of the largest media conglomerates in the world. That was because they had seen that there was a whole new generation of people who were not favouring one-to-many broadcast media, and were spending their time and their attention in these many-to-many peer relationships.

What Myspace does is enable News Corporation to position itself at the interstices, between these relationships, at the places between where people communicate, between themselves.

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