FreeCycle is a great example of what I call overloading: taking a simple tool (like a listserv) and building a successful, vibrant AND popular service on top of it. It may be technologically backwards and involve, as author Jen points out, a lot of cognitive and communications overhead… and yet people grok and adopt it.

This is my theory, but non-geeks are more comfortable learning a socio-cultural system (lurk, try, be criticized, try again, succeed, criticize, excel) than a technological system (RTFM). Sure, it involves more “overhead”, but it’s overhead that humans have evolved (for the most part) to be good at.

…or my theory is techno-colonialism and the natives wish they were freed from the yolks of socio-cultural norming. Thoughts?