As we saw in earlier chapters, participation in community life holds a number of advantages (as well as some drawbacks). This chapter sets out how networks specifically perform useful functions that are aligned with the purposes and principles of community development, especially their ability to carry ideas, information and resources across boundaries and to build meaningful relationships enabling people to cooperate in addressing shared challenges.

Information procession and knowledge management

In some respects, networks can be regarded as informal knowledge creation and management systems. They are usually non-hierarchical, with a range of access points and a multitude of transmission routes. This means that information can be obtained and transferred between any number of different nodes without being monitored or censored. This multiplexity is a major factor in the resilience of networks to structural flaws, disruption or attempts to control the through-flow of information.

Network-type structures are particularly useful in situations when information is ambiguous or risky, since contradictions can be clarified by turning to alternative sources for comparison and checking. Dialogue and debate within networks transform information so that it becomes intelligence (about the current situation) and knowledge (about the wider context). This is vital for solving immediate problems and for adapting to a changing world. Community connections are like the neural networks made of axons and dendrites in the brain, processing, integrating and transmitting information across linguistic and cultural boundaries like some kind of supercomputer constantly revising a shared but dispersed model of the world (Dunbar, 1996).

Conversation and peer learning

A huge amount of information and ‘common sense’ is communicated via informal networks, whether face-to-face or online, one to one or in open or closed groups. Conversations among friends, acquaintances, colleagues and neighbours convey rumour, opinion, local knowledge and news, allowing constant revisions to our understanding of the immediate and changing world in which we live (DiFonzo, 2008). The networks themselves become a repository of local intimate knowledge and ‘gossip’. As Smith recognised: