Mike & Ann -- She's cute and a bit mischievous but we love her and she's never late for meals.

That's right, one of my favorites ragtime songs can be found at:
Kitten on the keys

Written by Zez Confrey back in 1921

I "stumbled" across this blog & it's accompanying comments and find it very thought provoking indeed.

My two-cents worth: No, your "thinking" is not necessarily new but it sounds like it hit a chord with you and that does make it new. What I do like is that you are seeing this idea from a different angle and generally when that happens maybe a truly new idea (or piece of the puzzle) does come into being.

My initial reaction to your asking, "What do you think?" is this: I live in a rural area of Minnesota and we do our "social networking" over a cup of coffee or a can of beer. I have no way of knowing how many people in my immediate area have a computer but I'm guessing the percentage is quite small to the actual population. This being the case, the tried and true method of sharing information (through the pub or coffee shop) works very well.

I'm a coffee drinker so when I need some work done that is beyond the scope of my ability all I have to do is stand up in the coffee shop and shout out, "Does anyone know someone who I can hire to ____________?" and guess what? There's generally an answer -- "Yup, ol' Harry Tomkin, over in McGregor has a nephew who can help ya there!"

So, I give Harry Tomkin's nephew a call but he's laid up because he broke his leg but his brother's next door neighbor knows a guy (Calvin) over in Deerwood who can do the job. The trouble is, Harry's nephew doesn't know his new phone number. OK, so I call a friend of mine - Bob Johnson who's a former mayor of Deerwood. He knows everybody within 50 miles of Deerwood and sure nuf he says he'll contact someone who probably has the guys phone number. Bob calls me back 20 minutes later with the number and a brief endorsement - " Calvin, is a good worker, honest and trustworthy. You couldn't do better."

The social networking system around here is pretty darn good but on occasion it fails. No system is fool proof but the basic idea for your Hexamodel & small town living is there.

Everybody is connected and blogging seems to bring certain people together for a brief moment in time -- there's about 20 people here from all over the place inputting comments about your idea. It's not perfect but it's definitely a start and much better than what we've had up until now.

I think one of the major problems with the internet social networking "system" is that there's still a lot of fear about who's who when it comes to chatting with each other. To develop relations requires trust and I'm just not sure that we trust our "neighbors" on the internet enough to really say what we really mean. Is my name really Chuck Webber? Who knows?

If we do get to the trust level of the small town pub or coffee shop we might just really start to realize a true change in internet social networking but I'm pretty sure that won't be in Web 2.0. Maybe, 11.4 or 27.3 ... somewhere around that point.

That said, Don't give up on this idea and keep tossing it about until something sticks to the wall of workability.

Chuck