virtual community
The Virtual Community – Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier (1993) by howard rheingold via 282 pg pdf [https://dlc.dlib.indiana.edu/dlc/bitstream/handle/10535/18/The_Virtual_Community.pdf?sequence=1]
notes/quotes:
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..It is our task–our essential, central, crucial task–to transform ourselves from mere social creatures into community creatures...t It is the only way that human evolution will be able to proceed – M. Scott Peck The Different Drum: Community-Making and Peace
there’s a legit use of tech (nonjudgmental expo labeling).. to connect us (matters who’s together in a space) aka: to facil a legit global detox leap.. for (blank)’s sake.. and we’re missing it
legit freedom will only happen if it’s all of us.. and in order to be all of us.. has to be sans any form of m\a\p
brown belonging law.. missing pieces.. et al
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intro
I care about these people I met through my computer, and I care deeply about the future of the medium that enables us to assemble..t
beyond finite set of choices and (could be) sans any form of m\a\p
Finding the WELL was like discovering a cozy little world that had been flourishing without me, hidden within the walls of my house; an entire cast of characters welcomed me to the troupe with great merriment as soon as I found the secret door. Like others who fell into the WELL, I soon discovered that I was audience, performer, and scriptwriter, along with my companions, in an ongoing improvisation. A full-scale subculture was growing on the other side of my telephone jack, and they invited me to help create something new
The virtual village of a few hundred people I stumbled upon in 1985 grew to eight thousand by 1993. It became clear to me during the first months of that history that I was participating in the self-design of a new kind of culture. I watched the community’s social contracts stretch and change as the people who discovered and started building the WELL in its first year or two were joined by so many others. Norms were established, challenged, changed, reestablished, rechallenged, in a kind of speeded-up social evolution.
infinitesimal structures approaching the limit of structureless\ness and/or vice versa .. aka: ginorm/small ness
myth of normal ness
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People in virtual communities use words on screens to exchange pleasantries and argue, engage in intellectual discourse, conduct commerce, exchange knowledge, share emotional support, make plans, brainstorm, gossip, feud, fall in love, find friends and lose them, play games, flirt, create a little high art and a lot if idle talk. People in virtual communities do just about everything people do in real life, but we leave our bodies behind. You can’t kiss anybody and nobody can punch you in the nose, but a lot can happen within those boundaries. To the millions who have been drawn into it, the richness and vitality of computer-linked cultures is attractive, even addictive.
because.. missing pieces
7 (5)
I have written this book to help inform a wider population about the potential importance of cyberspace to political liberties and the ways virtual communities are likely to change our experience of the real world, as individuals and communities. Although I am enthusiastic about the liberating potentials of computer-mediated communications, I try to keep my eyes open for the pitfalls of mixing technology and human relationships.. t
mufleh humanity law: we have seen advances in every aspect of our lives except our humanity– Luma Mufleh
need 1st/most: means to undo our hierarchical listening
there’s a legit use of tech (nonjudgmental expo labeling).. to facil a legit global detox leap.. for (blank)’s sake.. and we’re missing it
legit freedom will only happen if it’s all of us.. and in order to be all of us.. has to be sans any form of m\a\p
The technology that makes virtual communities possible has the potential to bring enormous leverage to ordinary citizens at relatively little cost–intellectual leverage, social leverage, commercial leverage, and most important, political leverage. But the technology will not in itself fulfill that potential; this latent technical power must be used intelligently and deliberately by an informed population. More people must learn about that leverage and learn to use it, while we still have the freedom to do so, if it is to live up to its potential..t The odds are always good that big power and big money will find a way to control access to virtual communities; big power and big money always found ways to control new communications media when they emerged in the past. The Net is still out of control in fundamental ways, but it might not stay that way for long. What we know and do now is important because it is still possible for people around the world to make sure this new sphere of vital human discourse remains open to the citizens of the planet before the political and economic big boys seize it, censor it, meter it, and sell it back to us.
if have to be informed.. trained.. prepped.. already exclusionary
we need a problem deep enough to resonate w/8bn today.. a mechanism simple enough to be accessible/usable to 8bn today.. and an ecosystem open enough to set/keep 8bn legit free
ie: org around a problem deep enough (aka: org around legit needs) to resonate w/8bn today.. via a mechanism simple enough (aka: tech as it could be) to be accessible/usable to 8bn today.. and an ecosystem open enough (aka: sans any form of m\a\p) to set/keep 8bn legit free
The Net is an informal term for the loosely interconnected computer networks that use CMC technology to link people around the world into public discussions.
Virtual communities are social aggregations that emerge from the Net when enough people carry on those public discussions long enough, with sufficient human feeling, to form webs of personal relationships in cyberspace.
unless.. nonjudgmental expo labeling (aka: self-talk as data to connect).. not forming webs.. still being formed by people telling other people what to do
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Cyberspace, originally a term from William Gibson’s science-fiction novel Neuromancer, is the name some people use for the conceptual space where words, human relationships, data, wealth, and power are manifested by people using CMC technology.
Although spatial imagery and a sense of place help convey the experience of dwelling in a virtual community, biological imagery is often more appropriate to describe the way cyberculture changes. In terms of the way the whole system is propagating and evolving, think of cyberspace as a social petri dish, the Net as the agar medium, and virtual communities, in all their diversity, as the colonies of microorganisms that grow in petri dishes. Each of the small colonies of microorganisms–the communities on the Net–is a social experiment that nobody planned but that is happening nevertheless.
but is planned if not free enough for all to access/use today.. none of us are free ness..
We now know something about the ways previous generations of communications technologies changed the way people lived. We need to understand why and how so many social experiments are coevolving today with the prototypes of the newest communications technologies. My direct observations of online behavior around the world over the past ten years have led me to conclude that whenever CMC technology becomes available to people anywhere, they inevitably build virtual communities with it, just as microorganisms inevitably create colonies
if we know anything.. it’s that all we know is non legit data.. like from whales in sea world.. we have no idea what legit free people are like.. communicate like..
I suspect that one of the explanations for this phenomenon is the hunger for community that grows in the breasts of people around the world as more and more informal public spaces disappear from our real lives..t I also suspect that these new media attract colonies of enthusiasts because CMC enables people to do things with each other in new ways, and to do altogether new kinds of things–just as telegraphs, telephones, and televisions did.
missing piece #2 – hunger for community.. we need to listen deeper.. so we can org around legit needs
again.. ie: org around a problem deep enough (aka: org around legit needs) to resonate w/8b today.
Because of its potential influence on so many people’s beliefs and perceptions, the future of the Net is connected to the future of community, *democracy, education, science, and intellectual life–some of the human institutions people hold most dear, whether or not they know or care about the future of computer technology. The future of the Net has become too important to leave to specialists and special interests. As it influences the lives of a growing number of people, more and more citizens must contribute to the dialogue about the way public funds are applied to the development of the Net, and we
must **join our voices to the debate about the way it should be administered. We need a clear citizens’ vision of the way the Net ought to grow, a firm idea of the kind of media environment we would like to see in the future. If we do not develop such a vision for ourselves, the future will be shaped for us by large commercial and political powerholders
*cancerous distractions.. oi
**seat at the table ness.. oi.. all whalespeak
The Net is so widespread and anarchic today because of the way its main sources converged in the 1980s, after years of independent, apparently unrelated development, using different technologies and involving different populations of participants. The technical and social convergences were fated, but not widely foreseen, by the late 1970s.
*has not been yet.. to date.. oi howard
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The wide-area CMC networks that span continents and join together thousands of smaller networks are a spinoff of American military research.
not even going to address that it’s about military .. or even that it’s about research.. fact that they were/are gatherings for one purpose alone.. makes them cancerous distractions
again.. who gathers in a space is huge.. we need to try a legit diff way (now that we have the means to facil that supposed chaos)
ie: imagine if we listened to the itch-in-8b-souls 1st thing everyday & used that data to connect us (tech as it could be.. ai as augmenting interconnectedness as nonjudgmental expo labeling)
ie: Then, in a similar, ad hoc, do-it-yourself manner, computer conferencing grew out of the needs of U.S.
policymakers to develop a communications medium for dispersed decision making
need means for curiosity over decision making
The hobbyists who interconnect personal computers via telephone lines to make computer bulletin-board systems, known as BBSs, have home-grown their part of the Net, a *true grassroots use of technology...This way of passing information and communication around a network as a
distributed resource with **no central control manifested in the rapid growth of the anarchic
global conversation known as Usenet. This invention of distributed conversation that
flows around obstacles–a grassroots adaptation of a technology originally designed as a
doomsday weapon–***might turn out to be as important in the long run as the hardware and
software inventions that made it possible..t
*not as long as still in sea world.. just perpetuating whalespeak
**still central control if any form of m\a\p
***not until we try something legit diff.. ie: tech as nonjudgmental expo labeling .. to help us listen deeper to what’s already w/in 8b people.. aka: until we use tech to org around legit needs
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These “data superhighways” use special telecommunication lines and other equipment to
send *very large amounts of information throughout the network at very high speeds..t
ARPANET started around **twenty years ago with roughly one thousand users, and now
Internet is approaching ten million users..t
*makes no diff how large and fast.. if non legit data.. need to try/use self-talk as data
**if legit open to legit free people.. virility would/could happen overnight.. not enough until it’s all of us.. and (to me) won’t be all of us until we let go enough to leap .. for (blank)’s sake.. otherwise we keep perpetuating same song via whac-a-mole-ing ness
the energy we need most.. is energy of 8b alive people.. humanity needs a leap.. to get back/to simultaneous spontaneity .. simultaneous fittingness.. everyone in sync..
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from the content of my thoughts or the state of my circle of friends before I started dabbling in virtual communities. One minute I’m involved in the minutiae of local matters such as planning next week’s bridge game, and the next minute I’m part of a debate raging in seven countries. Not only do I inhabit my virtual communities; to the degree that I carry around their conversations in my head and begin to mix it up with them in real life, my virtual communities also inhabit my life. I’ve been colonized; my sense of family at the most fundamental level has been virtualized.
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Every flavor of technological futurist, from Alvin Toffler and John Naisbitt to Peter Drucker and George Gilder, base utopian hopes on “the information age” as a techno-fix for social problems. Yet little is
known about the impact these newest media might have on our daily lives, our minds, our families, even the future of democracy.
makes no diff if still non legit ‘info’..
Social psychologists, sociologists, and historians have developed useful tools for asking questions about human group interaction. Different communities of interpretation, from anthropology to economics, have different criteria for studying whether a group of people is a community. In trying to apply traditional analysis of community behavior to the kinds of interactions emerging from the Net, I have adopted a schema proposed by Marc Smith, a graduate student in sociology at the University of California at Los Angeles, who has been doing his fieldwork in the WELL and the Net. Smith focuses on the concept of “collective goods.” Every cooperative group of people exists in the face of a competitive world because that group of people recognizes there is something valuable that they can gain only by banding together. Looking for a group’s collective goods is a way of looking for the elements that bind isolated individuals into a community
oh my
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The three kinds of collective goods that Smith proposes as the social glue that binds the WELL into something resembling a community are social network capital, knowledge capital, and communion.
oh my
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Ultimately, if you want to form your own opinions, you need to pick up a good beginner’s guidebook and plunge into the Net for yourself. It is possible, however, to paint a kind of word-picture, necessarily somewhat sketchy, of the varieties of life to be found on the Net.
Much of this book is a tour of widening circles of virtual communities as they exist today. I believe that most citizens of democratic societies, given access to clearly presented information about the state of the Net, will make wise decisions about how the Net ought to be governed.
yeah.. i think i’m done for now.. jumping to end.. just to see
258
If electronic democracy is to succeed, however, in the face of all the obstacles, activists must do more than avoid mistakes. Those who would use computer networks as political tools must go forward and actively apply their theories to more and different kinds of communities. If there is a last good hope, a bulwark against the hyper-reality of Baudrillard or Forster, *it will come from a new way of looking at
technology. Instead of falling under the spell of a sales pitch, or rejecting new technologies as instruments of illusion, we need to look closely at new technologies and ask how they can help build stronger, more humane communities..t–-and ask how they might be obstacles to that goal. The late 1990s may eventually be seen in retrospect as a narrow window of historical opportunity, when
people either acted or failed to act effectively to regain control over communications technologies. **Armed with knowledge, guided by a clear, human-centered vision, governed by a commitment to civil discourse, we the citizens hold the key levers at a pivotal time. What happens next is largely up to us.
*there’s a legit use of tech (nonjudgmental expo labeling).. to facil a legit global detox leap.. for (blank)’s sake.. and we’re missing it
legit freedom will only happen if it’s all of us.. and in order to be all of us.. has to be sans any form of m\a\p
**up to us to let go of knowledge ness and clear ness and discourse ness.. and citizens ness..
let go
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be you. 