Many of us have grown up with the concept of quid pro quo, a price for a service. When payment is not requested, one usually understands the obligation of either "giving back", "paying it forward", or if one is particularly fortunate, both.

Sometimes it's referred to as, "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours".

When I got my first amateur radio license, I found myself much more interested in emergency communications (ARES where I was living, RACES where I live now) than in chatting up as many hams in as many countries as possible. Since one of the purposes of the Amateur Radio Service is to have a pool of operators familiar with both radio equipment and emergency communications protocols, it seemed to me that in order to merit the casual use of very valuable radio frequencies, we needed to be ready, willing, and able to perform to, or beyond, the commercial value of those frequencies in order to merit our continued use of them.

One of my "Elmers" (hamspeak for "mentors"), a broadcast communications professional who spent many years serving on the board of the American Radio Relay League, disagreed with my assessment, saying that the moment we put a price on bandwidth, that bandwidth would be sold away. Years later, that bandwidth is being auctioned off piece by piece, and the continued vigilance of amateur radio operators is required to maintain some bandwidth for the public good.

What reminded me of this quid pro quo was the concept of meritocracy-based medical-care rationing, which I touched upon in a previous post, and a comment on a STARFLEET mailing list referencing Spock's sacrifice at the end of STAR TREK II: The Wrath of Khan ("The needs of the many outweighed the needs of the few..." "...or the one?"), and Kirk's response that was the meat of STAR TREK III: The Search for Spock ("The needs of the one outweighed the needs of the many").

Now, lest you think I'm a dyed-in-the-wool altruist -- I'm not. I'm in this for myself, which means to some degree, I'm also in it for those I care about (and who care about me). But once one is comfortable with one's self, it becomes time to think beyond.

About twenty years ago, I started to write an essay based on the thesis that a marginal organization can be considered to "have come of age" -- to have matured to the point where it can be considered somewhat "normal" by the mainstream media once that organization began to think beyond its own members and direct (at least some of) its activities towards the betterment of the world at large. While my thoughts then were of organized fandom, a similar measure could be applied to today's online diabetes community:

• Where we started out answering each other's questions, we now use that information to assist people with diabetes we encounter "in real life".
• Where we once worried (and still worry!) about other diabetics who are unable to afford the cost of supplies and medications, we now have charitable organizations and patient assistance programs to help offset some of these challenges.
• Where once we only complained of poor results and poor patient-doctor relationships, we now gather and evaluate the data pertinent to our own medical needs, and present the evidence to our medical teams, (hopefully) making sure they keep up-to-date on the standards of care for people with diabetes.
• We have programs like the dLife Foundation, Diabuddy, and the DHF Ambassadors to bring this sort of support to people without Internet access, without transportation, and without local in-person support groups. In these ways, we are "paying forward" the support we have found, and continue to receive, for living with diabetes.

Perhaps it is time to say that diabetes-oriented social networking, and the Diabetes Online Community, have come of age.

During the late 1980's and early 1990's, a number of STARFLEET chapters began adopting charities to support; STARFLEET began several organization-wide programs for the benefit of STARFLEET members and of troops serving overseas. The Klingon League of Assault Warriors (KLAW) started supporting a raptor preservation organization, and a number of science fiction conventions started adding Red Cross blood drives to their events schedules. In these programs, fans are using our enthusiasm, our friendships, and our dreams for the future to try to bring the world closer to the utopian future envisioned in the writings and media that bring us together.