Howard Rheingold.

The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier.

Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2000.

paper, 360 p., ISBN 0-262-68121-8, US$18.95.

MIT Press: http://mitpress.mit.edu

This book divides neatly into two elements, the original text written in 1993 and additional chapters added for this MIT republication. The 1993 section is written unashamedly as a defence of those who enjoy an online life in the face of detractors who thought that "only socially crippled adolescents would use the Internet to communicate".

 

As a participant since 1985 in The WELL, an online community established in the San Francisco area, Rheingold paints a vibrant and enthusiastic picture of a life online. He describes the "barn raising" events of any community, the births and deaths, with the authentic voice of someone who has spent enough time in this "third place", the place where Oldenburg proposed in The Great Good Place that people join for conviviality. His narrative about these events is moving and will resonate for anyone who has experience of how these events can affect virtual communities. This early section deals with the growth of the "gift economies" that made the WELL, and other virtual communities, viable. He also explains the techniques used to attract valuable participants, such as providing free accounts to local journalists.

 

Using this as a backdrop Rheingold then discusses the technologies and innovators that enabled the birth and growth of virtual communities - from Englebart's work on HCI in the 1950s, through the development of ARPA, the work at Xerox PARC, and UUCP from Bell Laboratories - he shows how the components slotted together.

The horizons are then drawn wider and we look at communities in Japan (COARA), France (based on the MINITEL system). Again Rheingold looks at the people involved in the processes. We meet the "Online Activists" using the Internet as a democratising tool. People like Dave Hughes, a retired Army Officer, who travelled with a laptop and evangelised about the Net. Hughes helped towns by advocating and practising online activism using bulletin boards to pass local council planning decisions to a wider audience. He used this technique to expose inefficient and ineffective processes in his local authority in Colorado Springs and showed others how they could make an impact locally by using bulletin boards.

 

In addition to a wider landscape we also see the strata - the MOOs and MUDs, FIDO and Usenet, IRC and BBS. This was a time when communities used their own, often proprietary, software and the only links would be through e-mail where members of the communities could talk to members of other communities to exchange ideas and invite new members. Nor are the less desirable elements ignored, flame wars and Energy Creatures, those contributors who deliberately post to generate any response: positive or negative, and who 'feed' on that response are dealt with and highlighted. Rheingold is excellent at getting beyond the online persona, showing us something of the people behind the screen.

 

In Chapter 10, "Disinfomocracy", Rheingold starts to look at some of the wider issues about using the Net. Questions about who owns digital information and whether ISPs can control the information are still with us today.

 

The 1993 section of the book closes as the first graphical browsers are becoming available. The inherent one-to-many communication of the WELL and other communities is soon to change as the nascent Web starts its amazing growth. In the updated section Rheingold brings the story of the WELL, the people and politics up to date and also discusses his own early failures to bring commercial community building to the Web. He looks at differing views of an online community; can it really be viewed as a community in its fullest sense? Rheingold's final paragraph sums this up:

"The battle for the shape of the Net is joined. Part of the battle is a battle of dollars and power, but the great lever is still understanding - if enough people can understand what is happening, I still believe we can have an influence. Whether we live in a Panoptic or Democratic Net ten years from now depends, in no small measure, on what you and I know and do now."

Readers of this book will be better equipped to understand how the Net and the Web can be used to join people together and used actively. Readers will also have a social history document that shows a personal perspective of an earlier, more innocent, Internet and finally they will have an excellent history of the birth and growth of the Internet. Rheingold is still able to remind us that the core of the Internet is people, the people who use the tools, the people who build the tools and the people who would control the tools.

 

Review taken from FirstMonday Volume 6, Number 9 - 3 September 2001 with the permission of the review author.