No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the author.
... The network known as TheWell had the first account of a death online that I encountered. It is the wealth of material published on TheWell, including by its own postgraduate and tech-savvy members, that helped it become well known as the first 'virtual community' 30 (Lewis, 1994;Ryan, 2010;Hafner, 1997). When TheWell opened in 1985, home computer ownership was considered to be limited, with systems that primarily operated with black and white displays and no internal hard drives (Ryan, 2010;Hafner, 1997 Although the Macintosh had been released a year earlier, and the Graphic User Interface had signalled a huge shift in accessibility, TheWell was deliberately run using PicoSpan, ...
... It is the wealth of material published on TheWell, including by its own postgraduate and tech-savvy members, that helped it become well known as the first 'virtual community' 30 (Lewis, 1994;Ryan, 2010;Hafner, 1997). When TheWell opened in 1985, home computer ownership was considered to be limited, with systems that primarily operated with black and white displays and no internal hard drives (Ryan, 2010;Hafner, 1997 Although the Macintosh had been released a year earlier, and the Graphic User Interface had signalled a huge shift in accessibility, TheWell was deliberately run using PicoSpan, ...
... Accessibility, however, is conditional as Still, TheWell is a richly documented network and, importantly for this thesis, noted for the lively relationships that were formed both online and offline. As a network, it was considered to support an 'intensity and intimacy' that notably spanned births, marriages, divorces and death (Rheingold, 1993;Hafner, 1997). The first encounter with death occurred when a highly active and long-term member died on June 1st ...
In the end, we are all dead. But for some of us, our deaths become entangled online. Our vast data legacies and the appropriation of social media by the bereaved can result in online networks being used to mediate loss, mourning and memory in the event of a death. Recognising this phenomenon between death and technologies has resulted in researchers and designers being asked to become ‘thanatosensitive’, or death-sensitive. In particular, designers have been presented with Thanatosensitive Design [TSD] as an optimistic and non-prescriptive design methodology, devised by Massimi, for researching, designing and developing thanatosensitive technologies within sensitive end-of-life contexts (Massimi, 2012).
This thesis is an invitation to reconsider TSD, to rethink what sensitive design practice could look like and the kinds of commitments and claims it is making to bereaved people. This reconsideration takes place through the development of an interdisciplinary conceptual framework that supports ‘thinking with’ and ‘caring for’ other elements in a situation of inquiry (Diprose, 2009; Puig de la Bellacasa, 2012; Puig de la Bellacasa, 2011). Empirically, this exposes a messy human landscape of loss, non-living ‘ghosts’ and non-human networks, the presences and agencies of which unsettle the human-centred ethico-political assumptions that lie within the TSD agenda.
This thesis embraces the disturbances that have arisen from empirical and theoretical commitments and uses them as a way to reconsider what thanatosensitivity looks like when it embraces a more inclusive ethico-political landscape that decentres the human. Therefore, this thesis contributes to emerging literatures at the recent intersection between death and technology studies, firstly, by exposing a complex and previously unaccounted for messy ecology of loss across networks online, and, secondly, by reflexivity, exploring how this messy ecology disturbs the centrality of the human in TSD framings.
These contributions cumulate in a reconfiguration of TSD that draws out an alternative approach and considerations for practitioners interested in designing sensitively for the end of life. This reconfiguration aims to be socially responsible, inclusive and ecologically sensitive in ways that set it apart from Massimi’s original concept of TSD. This new vision of sensitive design is summarised into a design statement and a polemic design manifesto to aid practitioners who wish to sensitively design for the end of life. The thesis leaves us with a speculative afterword, to consider future work and envision what other forms designing for death might take if we continue to push at the human-centeredness within design ecologies in light of the apocalyptic shadow of the Anthropocene.
... It was clear that Bonnie felt relaxed using e-mail, addressing and conversing with the psychiatrist in a much more informal tone than she normally used in face-to-face conversations in the office. 4. By having to report in via e-mail on a quasi-daily basis, patients are forced to be constantly aware of their eating-related behaviors and of being in therapy. ...
... 3. Clinician failure to respond in a timely or adequate fashion where e-mail will not suffice either for assessment or reassurance for seriously distressed patients who may communicate crises via e-mail. 4. Patients using e-mail excessively or sending inappropriate messages. ...
... 3. Establish the types of transactions (prescription refilling, appointment scheduling, etc.) and the sensitivity of subject matter (HIV, mental health, etc.) that are permitted over e-mail. 4. Instruct patients to put the category of the transaction in the subject line of the message for filtering purposes: prescriptions, appointments, medical advice, billing questions, etc. ...
... Thus, the WELL, as a community, arguably pre-existed its move into online space. Its subsequent online development was also dependent upon a multitude of connections that existed beyond the virtual realm, as well as within it (Hafner 1997). ...
In the past 10 years, alongside the swift expansion of the Internet, scholarly attention to virtual community has grown rapidly. The analysis of virtual social relations has emerged as a clear, key theme in the study of new media. For the foreseeable future at least, studies of virtual community are set to play their part in informing our wider understanding of technological and social change. As such, conducting a retrospective review of Rheingold’s (1993) seminal text The Virtual Community is a timely exercise. No figure has loomed as large, or as controversially, over the study of virtual community as Howard Rheingold. The Virtual Community remains one of the most commonly discussed texts on the subject, and as such remains required reading for anyone interested in online sociability.
... Visibility and authentication of identities; for example, requiring unique and persistent identities. The success of the WELL, the first large-scale online community, to suppress "flaming" and other anti-social behaviors, has been attributed in part to a policy of YOYOW (You Own Your Own Words) (Rheingold, 2000;Hafner, 1997;Smith, 1992). Visual representation of collective actions; for example, software applications can emulate social practices like queues, or provide indicators about members' contribution levels during the production of continuous public goods. ...
Theories of collaboration in offline communities focus on local dynamics and institutions that produce social control. The literature highlights some pre-conditions for social control in such communities,, such as limited exit options, the multiplexity of the community experience, and clear boundaries. I argue that such theories are of limited value for explaining collaboration in online communities, and present two alternative routes that are more appropriate for explaining why communities ground collaboration.
... Quoi qu'il en soit, c'est surtout grâce au well (Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link), un bbs fondé en 1985 à Sausalito en Californie, que la notion de communauté virtuelle a vu sa notoriété monter en flèche (Hafner, 1997), notamment grâce à l'ouvrage très médiatisé de l'un de ses membres les plus fameux, Howard Rheingold. Ce dernier définit les communautés virtuelles comme « des regroupements socioculturels qui émergent du réseau lorsqu'un nombre suffisant d'individus participent à ces discussions publiques pendant assez de temps en y mettant suffisamment de coeur pour que des réseaux de relations humaines se tissent au sein du cyberespace » (1995, p. 6). ...
Ces dernieres annees, universitaires et journalistes ont frequemment recours a l'adjectif « virtuel » pour qualifier des entites et phenomenes sociaux. L'emploi de l'expression «communaute virtuelle », aujourd'hui naturalisee dans la langue courante, est particulierement representatif de cette tendance. Cependant, son usage en sciences sociales souleve plusieurs questions: etant donne la polysemie des mots virtuel et communaute, que signifie exactement l'expression «communaute virtuelle»? Quel nouveau type de collectif est-elle censee decrire et eclairer? N'implique-t-elle pas paradoxalement la nostalgie d'une forme mythique de communaute, ainsi que l'idealisation du face a face comme situation de communication? Cet article tente d'apporter des elements de reponse a ces questions a travers un examen critique de textes recents en sciences sociales. Dans un premier temps, nous distinguons trois conceptions principales de la relation entre le reel et le virtuel - representation, resolution et hybridation - puis nous recourons a cette typologie pour categoriser les principaux discours'sur les « communautes virtuelles ». Dans un deuxieme temps, nous passons en revue diverses approches de la notion de communaute, en relation avec celles de public et de reseau social. En conclusion, nous discutons brievement de l'evolution des roles respectifs de la communication en face a face et de la communication mediatisee dans la formation des collectifs. A l'ere d'lnternet, les frontieres entre tous ces concepts semblent s'estomper; cela explique peut-etre l'attrait croissant de la virtualite comme categorie pour penser le social
... Though Community Memory was the first of its kinds, The Well is considered the oldest known social networking site (Hafner: 2004). It was found in 1985 and it is a acronym for "Whole Earth Lectronic Link". ...
This article address five concepts that are paramount toward continued evolution of social networking sites (SNS), - stabilisation, visual, language, security and flexibility. These constructs add to our proposed framework. Firmly grounded research on social networking sites and literature, we propose that user feedback is the critical component that stimulates the development and growth of social networking sites online. we offer a framework that can aid new and current social networking sites toward success. We conclude that the management of social networking sites should be treated as a process that is pragmatic and, paradoxically, be stimulated.
... Activities on the campus and in the Bay area included the Homebrew group for the first personal computer hobbyists. Lee's response to the atmosphere at UC-Berkeley prompted him to join the WELL (seeHafner, 1997). Lee insists:. . . . ...
To study the internet, in its evolving morphologies, brings to mind the fable of the blind men and the elephant – where academics from different disciplines jostle side-by-side seeking to explore the phenomena, each limited by having ‘just a piece of the animal’ to hand. However, as with any multi-disciplinary field of study, the variety of perspectives and the diversity of methodological approaches becomes a strength rather than a weakness. This discussion moves from the terrain of internet studies and examines these practitioners – internet scholars. Here, four internet scholars are examined to highlight the differences amongst their disciplinary perspectives, their methodological approaches to the study of the internet, as well as their differing life circumstances and diverse academic career tracks. Through a biographical narrative profile of each academic it was possible to outline the process of internet scholarship: how does it happen? Are there differences between internet scholars and other types of scholars? and so forth. The four academic profiles presented here offer substantial clues for how the process of scholarly engagement works, particularly how academics can work out their own methodologies from their disciplinary convictions when approaching a new field of study. Naturally, the four pathways serve only as exemplars for future study. As internet scholars continue to emerge from a number of academic departments or research institutes, further analysis of such scholarship, both through academic career tracks and sheer intellectual grappling with the internet are vital to understanding the field of internet studies and research.
... WELL stands for Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link and is a reference to Brand's earlier project, The Whole Earth Catalog, handbook of the hippie generation. Profiled in Rheingold's Virtual Community (1993), The WELL is one of the oldest online communities and also one of the most studied and documented (Smith 1992, Figallo 1993, Hafner 1997, Wellman and Gulia 1999, Kollock 1999. The WELL, Turner argues, "not only modeled the interactive possibilities of computermediated-communication but also translated a countercultural vision of the proper relationship between technology and sociability into a resource for imagining and managing life in the network economy" (2005:491). ...
Cyborganic, the subject of my study, was a San Francisco community whose members brought Wired magazine online, launched Hotwired; led the open source Apache project; and staffed and started dozens of Internet enterprises—from Craig's List to Organic Online—during the first decade of the Web's growth as a popular platform (1993-2003). The imaginaries, practices, and genres of networked social media developed in this group figured in the initial development of Web publishing and prefigured contemporary phenomena such as Facebook and a host of other media collectively known as "Web 2.0." While my ethnography examines the symbiosis of online and face-to-face sociality in the growth of Web publishing, this paper focuses on that symbiosis at a more micro-level, looking at specific forms and practices of networked social media in Cyborganic that have become predominant on the contemporary U.S Internet. Anthropologists have challenged the assumed "isomorphism between space, place, and culture" (Gupta and Ferguson 1992: 34) and have theorized "technological infrastructures as sites for the production of locality" without a necessarily geographic referent (Ito 1999:2). Despite this decoupling and the tendency to associate online sociality with fragmentation and dematerialization, my Cyborganic study demonstrates that the intermediation of online and onground can work to consolidate and extend, rather than attenuate, affiliations based on place and embodiment that anthropologists have long seen as defining sources of identity and cultural difference.
... In contrast to questions about the online interactions, the subjects were also asked to evaluate COW as a learning tool. COW is a lean system modeled after ´The Well,´ a conferencing system commonly referred to as one of the most established and intellectually rich discussion sites on the Internet (Hafner, 1997;Moore, 1995;Rheingold, 1993). Consequently, COW was designed to make it easy to know how many new notes are posted in which discussion area(s) and how to navigate to those notes (Malikowski, 1997). ...
... The potential synergies to be gained from virtual and physical hybrid structures should not be surprising. The experience of`Theof`The Well', the famous online-community in California, indicates that electronic communication benefits a lot from face-to-face meetings of the participants at some point (Hafner 1997 ). Moreover , recent social psychological research on Internet users highlights the dangers of assuming that the Internet can substitute for physical relationships (Kraut, Steinfield, Chan, Butler and Hoag 1998a). ...
The web is being heralded as a global marketplace, and globalization is seen as one of the key drivers for the diffusion of electronic commerce (EC). In stark contrast to the enthusiasm for a global electronic marketspace we have collected empirical support for the premise that much web-based commercial activity is regionally focused. Based on a brief introduction of the notion of regions, we will use a reference model for e-commerce in order to gain a rich, multifaceted view of the regional dimensions of e-commerce.
... In all cases, it was through the Sausolito, California-based BBS called the WELL (Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link), founded in 1985, that the notion of virtual community gained rapid notoriety (Hafner, 1997), thanks especially to the widely-discussed book written by one of its most famous members, Howard Rheingold (1993). Rheingold defined virtual communities as "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" (p. ...
Lately the term "virtual" has been used more and more frequently by both scholars and journalists to refer to social phenomena and entities. Quite representative of this trend is the phrase "virtual community" which has been rapidly accepted in common language. However, its use by social scientists raises many questions. Since the words "virtual" and "community" are both polysemic, what exactly might the term "virtual community" mean? And what new kind of collectivity is it supposed to circumscribe? Doesn't it imply a sort of nostalgia for a mythical form of community, along with an idealization of face-to-face interactions? This paper attempts to offer some elements of solution to these questions by means of a critical examination of recent social science texts. Résumé Ces dernières années, universitaires et journalistes ont fréquemment recours à l'adjectif « virtuel » pour qualifier des entités et phénomènes sociaux. L'emploi de l'expression « communauté virtuelle », aujourd'hui naturalisée dans la langue courante, est particulièrement représentatif de cette tendance. Cependant, son usage en sciences sociales soulève plusieurs questions : étant donné la polysémie des mots virtuel et communauté, que signifie exactement l'expression « communauté virtuelle » ? Quel nouveau type de collectif est-elle censée décrire et éclairer? N'implique-t-elle pas paradoxalement la nostalgie d'une forme mythique de communauté, ainsi que l'idéalisation du face à face comme situation de communication ? Cet article tente d'apporter des éléments de réponse à ces questions à travers un examen critique de textes récents en sciences sociales. Resumen En estas últimos años, universitarios y periodistas han utilizado frecuentemente el adjetivo «virtual» para calificar entidades y fenómenos sociales. El empleo de la expresión «comunidad virtual », hoy naturalizada en la lengua corriente, es particularmente representativo de esta tendencia. Sin embargo, su uso en ciencias sociales plantea varias cuestiones : teniendo en cuenta la polisemia de las palabras virtual y comunidad, qué significa exactamente la expresión «comunidad virtual »? Qué nuevo tipo de colectivo pretende describir y esclarecer? Esa expresión, no implica paradójicamente la nostalgia de una forma mítica de comunidad, como también la idealización del frente a frente como situación de comunicación? Este artículo intenta aportar elementos de respuesta a estas preguntas a través de un examen crítico de los textos recientes en ciencias sociales.
... These approaches to defining boundaries may even help us understand the cultures of global, wired organizations of individuals and teams who meet on line, rarely face to face (e.g., Barley and Kunda, forthcoming; Dunbar and Garud, 2001; Hedberg and Maravelias, 2001). For example, The Well was arguably the first strongly committed community of people that " lived " and worked together on the internet (e.g., Hafner, 1997), one that evolved an odd but deeply involving on-line culture (one member literally chose to die while on line to supportive community members). Garsten (1999) studied the transient and episodic imagined cultures of U.S. and Swedish temporary employees of flexible organizations. ...
Organizational culture: Beyond struggles for intellectual dominance This review is not structured in the usual way - a departure from tradition that merits an explanation. Literature reviews generally have a linear, often chronological structure, with attention to ‘who was first?’ The tone is apparently objective and decisively authoritative: ‘this study demonstrated that …’. The goal is to present the objective truth about what we've learned. The result is an enlightenment tale of cumulative progress, as one ‘original’ contribution after another builds a deeper and broader understanding than was available before. In a traditionally structured review, intellectual differences of opinion are usually handled with indirection and tact, an approach that helps scholars co-exist in a close-knit field while continuing to have cordial intellectual exchanges. Most often an author focuses predominantly on one point of view, relegating competing perspectives to brief summaries or the margins of a text (for example, in a ...
Online and offline community are both studied but not as an intersection. There is a gap in the literature on the nature of community that is blended online with offline and geographically situated.
SPENCE, a Model of online/offline community with measurement principles - capabilities - was formulated. It aims to provide an integrated view of residential online/offline community that offers a lens of synthesis. It is based on the definition: social exchange using channels of digital multi-media and physical expression, leading to permanent social ties connected across social graphs, from proximity informed by a diversity of values, interests and needs, bounded in settlement combining physical and cyber place, curated by an entrepreneur.
SPENCE has six facets - settlement, proximity, exchange, net/latticework, channels and entrepreneur; and four capabilities - trust, influence, information and intelligence. iii Two Case Studies, based on online/offline communities in London, deployed the methods of interview, survey and online social network study to discover the nature of online/offline community, how to investigate it and what policy initiatives could be implemented to develop it. The Survey and Twitter Study methods were merged into a Twofold Instrument.
The contributions of the thesis are: the Model SPENCE; novel concepts derived from the Model i.e. decile fabric, net/latticework, VINs ratio, diverse cohesion, specific cohesion, and capabilities, which offer updates on established concepts. The affordances of online/offline community include situated cognition, blended relations between people with cohesions in the social fabric predicated on a greater exchange of informal/formal assets. It is recommended that national digital infrastructure is developed to extend online/offline community, either as independent instances or as an integrated national platform. A twofold investigation method, measuring the national total of decile fabric, would offer a pragmatic automated approach to assist a national development programme.<br/
Explore the limits of using the computer to imagine yourself as whomever or whatever you want to be.
Im folgenden Beitrag geht es um Fragen der Nutzerinteressen und damit der Verbraucherpolitik bei den „neuen“ Phänomenen im technischen und im ökonomischen Sinn: die sogenannten Neuen Kommunikationstechnologien versprechen ja, im Spiegel vieler Medien und in der Meinung beachtlicher Nutzergruppen, eine weitgehende subjektive Freiheit bei der Kommunikation, eine neue Fülle und Qualität im Informationsangebot und neue Lebens- und Arbeitsformen. Andererseits erscheint heute, im Zusammenhang von Serverabschaltungen durch Sicherheitsbehörden, der Regulierung von Kryptographie, den kommenden digitalen Watermarks und auch neu gestellten urheberrechtlichen Ansprüchen, diese kommunikative Freiheit wiederum durch drohende ordnungspolitische Eingriffe gefährdet. Sind hier die herkömmlichen Verbraucherschutzeinrichtungen Bündnispartner z.B. für liberale Zielsetzungen? Reicht überhaupt das verbraucherschützerische Stiegengeländer auch in den „Cyberspace“ hinein? Solche Fragen werden gleichzeitig von einer Generalfrage begleitet: Baut sich mit den Neuen Kommunikationstechnologien nicht überhaupt Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft in ihren relevanten Objektbereichen um, wie das von neuen ökonomischen Perspektiven ja auch angesprochen wird?
This chapter explores the potential theoretical validity of a recent controversial qualitative study that used epidemiological modeling to suggest that the social media giant Facebook would lose 80% of its users by the year 2017. Reconfiguring this model as the basis of a useful qualitative approach, this chapter considers the historical cycle of adoption and abandonment endemic to message board-based social media sites from the 1980s through current mobile applications such as Yik Yak. What emerges from this approach is a distinct rhetorical pattern that likens the dangers of such social media sites with a virus that infects healthy bodies and communities, much as it functions in outbreak narratives. But like an adaptive virus, social media design has transformed in response, leading to the rise of technology that provide anonymity and ephemerality that makes such mapping much more difficult. As a response, we must consider the affective nature of social media as a way to account for the material and lived effects of its persistent virality.
Viele Sozialwissenschaftler haben über die Entwicklung von Online-Gemeinschaften geschrieben. Online-Gemeinschaften sind Gemeinschaften, die sich im Cyberspace bilden. Häufig bestehen diese Gemeinschaften nur aus Personen, die einander niemals Offline begegnet sind. In den vierzehn Jahren, in denen ich an der Online-Kommunikation teilnahm, war ich in Dutzenden solcher Online-Gemeinschaften Mitglied und habe hunderte Nutzer getroffen, die Computernetze in erster Linie dazu benutzten, um andere Nutzer zu treffen und mit ihnen neue Online-Beziehungen aufzubauen. Die Forschungsergebnisse, die ich in diesem Artikel vorstellen werde, zeigen allerdings, dass viele Nutzer des Internet-Dienstes AOL (America Online) sich ein AOL-Zugangskonto verschaffen, um Informationsrecherche zu betreiben, und mit Personen aus ihren bereits vorhandenen sozialen Netzwerken zu kommunizieren. Dieses Verschwinden der Unterscheidung zwischen Online- und Offline-Gemeinschaften steht im Kontrast zur Mehrzahl der ‘gängigen’ Vorstellungen über Online-Gemeinschaften und deutet auf weitreichende Veränderungen hin, die auch für unser Verständnis des Begriffs “Gemeinschaft” von Bedeutung sind.
Neue Technologien bergen neue Möglichkeiten und neue Chancen für kommunikative Austauschprozesse, die — so die Hoffnung — eine demokratische Grundhaltung befördern. Bertolt Brechts Radiotheorie ist auf diesem Gebiet ein Klassiker, an den ich einleitend kurz erinnern will. Mit Hilfe der technischen Apparate — also mit Hilfe des Radios —, so glaubte Brecht, könne man an wirkliche Ereignisse, an die historischen Prozesse, näher herankommen, indem Originalereignisse direkt übertragen werden könnten und der Hörer nicht auf Referate angewiesen sei: Interviews statt Referate, und vor allem Disputationen zwischen den Fachleuten sollten übertragen werden. Liest man heute Brechts Überlegungen aus den Jahren 1927 bis 1932 erneut, so fällt auf, wie sehr er sich eine Entwicklung in eine Richtung wünschte, die wir heute als Interaktivität der Medien zu bezeichnen gewohnt sind. Das Verhältnis zwischen Radio und Hörer, so führt Brecht nämlich aus, sei asymmetrisch; ein klassisches Sender-Empfänger-Modell; der Rundfunk sei ein reiner Distributionsapparat, der Informationen und Sendungen bis in den letzten Winkel der Erde verteile. Brecht fordert systematisch, diese Struktur zu überwinden; der Hörer soll aktiviert und zu einem Produzenten gemacht werden: „Der Rundfunk ist aus einem Distributionsapparat in einen Kommunikationsapparat zu verwandeln“ (Brecht, 129). Der Rundfunk könnte das großartigste Kommunikationssystem des öffentlichen Lebens werden, wenn er nicht nur senden, sondern auch empfangen; wenn er den Zuschauer nicht isolieren, sondern ihn in Beziehung setzen würde (vgl. Brecht, 129). Brecht hatte, das sollte kurz gezeigt werden, durchaus einen Blick dafür, wie technische Innovationen für demokratische Prozesse genutzt werden können. Auf der anderen Seite war ihm aber auch klar, dass gesellschaftliche Interessengruppen diese Möglichkeiten okkupieren: „Durch immer fortgesetzte, nie aufhörende Vorschläge zur besseren Verwendung der Apparate im Interesse der Allgemeinheit haben wir die gesellschaftliche Basis dieser Apparate zu erschüttern, ihre Verwendung im Interesse der wenigen zu diskutieren“ (Brecht, 133).
Viele Sozialwissenschaftler haben über die Entwicklung von Online-Gemeinschaften geschrieben. Online-Gemeinschaften sind Gemeinschaften, die sich im Cyberspace bilden. Häufig bestehen diese Gemeinschaften nur aus Personen, die einander niemals Offline begegnet sind. In den vierzehn Jahren, in denen ich an der Online-Kommunikation teilnahm, war ich in Dutzenden solcher Online-Gemeinschaften Mitglied und habe hunderte Nutzer getroffen, die Computernetze in erster Linie dazu benutzten, um andere Nutzer zu treffen und mit ihnen neue Online-Beziehungen aufzubauen. Die Forschungsergebnisse, die ich in diesem Artikel vorstellen werde, zeigen allerdings, dass viele Nutzer des Internet-Dienstes AOL (America Online) sich ein AOL-Zugangskonto verschaffen, um Informationsrecherche zu betreiben, und mit Personen aus ihren bereits vorhandenen sozialen Netzwerken zu kommunizieren. Dieses Verschwinden der Unterscheidung zwischen Online- und Offline-Gemeinschaften steht im Kontrast zur Mehrzahl der ‚gängigen‘ Vorstellungen über Online-Gemeinschaften und deutet auf weitreichende Veränderungen hin, die auch für unser Verständnis des Begriffs „Gemeinschaft“ von Bedeutung sind.
In many text-based virtual communities, confusion exists between the notion of social presence and cultural presence. While social presence may be evident in these communities, cultural presence may require more than dialogue or persistent world data (that is, backed up by off-line databases and retrievable after by online sessions). It is also not clear how much cultural presence is available in three-dimensional online games and role-playing environments. While they may have a great deal of social presence, these environments typically provide for instrumental learning that develops understanding of the design rules of the virtual environment, not the embedded and embodied social rules and individual beliefs of the participants as a community. In the case of virtual history and heritage environments, it appears that we do not understand cultural information and how to provide for it or communicate it digitally. Virtual heritage environments are a good example of this lack of meaningful interaction (Mosaker, 2000; Schroeder, 1996, p. 115). Apart from such isolated examples as Blaxxun’s The Renaissance project or VRoma (“A virtual community for teaching and learning classics”), one may well wonder whether these environments are communities at all. People intending to travel to a heritage site may have different requirements to people just exploring a virtual world. People may want to use virtual technology in different ways: to use the information as a travel guide; to imagine, explore, or understand the past; or to meet and socially participate with other people. Virtual environments that would be helped by a sense of cultural presence could be virtual communities, language and social exchange sites, virtual travel and tourism sites, or virtual heritage sites. Purchase this chapter to continue reading all 7 pages >
The World Wide Web (WWW) is a global, ubiquitous, and fundamentally dynamic environment for information exchange and processing. By connecting vast...
Does it make sense to talk about cyberspace as an alternative social reality? Is cyberspace the new frontier for the realization of the postmodern self? For philosophers Taylor and Saarinen, and the psychologist Turkle cyberspace is the practical manifestation of a postmodern reality, or rather hyperreality (Baudrillard). In hyperreal cyberspace, they argue, identity becomes plastic, 'I can change my self as easily as I change my clothes.' I will argue using Martin Heidegger that our being is being-in-the-world. To be-in-the-world means to be involved in the world; to have an involvement whole that is the always already present significance of what I do. Furthermore, that the making or choosing of self is only existentially meaningful in a horizon of significance, an involvement whole. I will argue that identity is tied to community, and community involves accepting some level of already there thrownness. Every cyber-traveler will eventually have to deal with the fact of being, always already, in-the-world.
Mapping Cyberspace is a ground-breaking geographic exploration and critical reading of cyberspace, and information and communication technologies. The book: Provides an understanding of what cyberspace looks like and the social interactions that occur there, explores the impacts of cyberspace, and information and communication technologies, on cultural, political and economic relations, charts the spatial forms of virutal spaces, details empirical research and examines a wide variety of maps and spatialisations of cyberspace and the information society, has a related website at http://www.MappingCyberspace.com. This book will be a valuable addition to the growing body of literature on cyberspace and what it means for the future.
ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any references for this publication.