http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/sundayfeature/pip/ulrz3/ - Liquid Living. BBC R3 - "Paul Bennun goes on a seven day digital diet. News, food, entertainment and social life are all accessed solely through the portal of his computer screen.

From his desktop he uses Skype to conduct interviews to assess the social implications and cultural ramifications of a life lived online.

We hear the arguments for and against the effects of virtual interaction, from the psychological repercussions of being able to contrive multiple web personas, to the social impact of flexible working conditions facilitated by wireless gadgetry, to the different ways of thinking required for Instant Messaging.

Featuring interviews with Howard Reingold (inventor of the term 'virtual community'), sociologist Zygmunt Bauman, 'cybershrink' Sherry Turkle and science-fiction writer William Gibson."

See if you can find it on "Listen again"

During this session I'll be floating to give help with technical stuff on the wikis. It's the time to ask if you're having problems!

Writing

I wanted to contribute some reflections on what we did today. There are a couple of reasons - firstly because I thought it might help if I tried to demonstrate something about how I use the reflective process and also to help me to "catch up" with where I think we are as we reach the midway point.

Something which struck me last week and today was the way in which we were able to bash around some ideas without people becoming entrenched; we've been able to look at different perspectives as a group without falling into the trap of thinking there are "right" or "wrong" answers. One of my objectives is to try to show the difficulties we face when engaging with something as big and complex as online communities and it's good to see that most people are open to new ideas and prepared to take issues away and explore them. I also think that part of what I’m working with the group for is to try to initiate ideas – it’s to try to get us looking at things from different perspectives.

I’ve spent some time thinking about the discussion about communities and I’m still not sure I’ve nailed it. I’m not sure what the differences might be between a “group” and a “community”. Intuitively I feel that I’m a member of any number of groups but that not all of those groups are also communities. This leads me to think about how I might characterise the differences between groups and communities. If I think about a group of people who teach at LCC I’m a member but I only know three other members of that group and much as I get on well with them we’re not a community. Does community involve investment? I might categorise another group as those with an OU degree but I don’t know many of them, I do know some and we form a community because we share ideas and support – we give and receive something within our … community? Might our gifts, comments and sharing views, form currency in a gift economy? Is community membership based on what we give to and take from the community? Does membership of any community depend on active participation? I’ve been thinking about “informal” communities rather than those with elected leaders – if we think about people who write blogs as a community are those who are thought of as “leaders” the ones who contribute most? Is this our “gift economy”?  The way I’m visualising this community is as a set of circles.

The circle in the middle represents the main group of the community, the leaders for want of a better term. The outer rings show different levels of membership – possibly determined by skill or activity or level of contribution. Members might move between different levels based on whatever the “currency” of the community might be – if this community is about working on a piece of open source software those at the very centre might be the people able to determine the direction of the development while those further out are working on a specific piece of the whole and the quality of their work might move them closer to the centre (or further away!). Those on the outer level might not participate much, might simply be observers, might be new and just joining, etc. Does that make sense?

Back to Monday’s session - I think the extended middle section, the "break" offered time for groups to coalesce and discuss the project within a slightly more “formal” setting, i.e. as part of the session. I certainly think we should use this space again.

I’m getting a great deal out of the Monday sessions and learning all the time. Thanks guys!

Already!

Some great work on the blogs and also some that haven't got anything at all.

This week I'd like to carry on with the general discussions about what we might  mean by "Online communities" and what that also means about who we are online. I've posted some links on my wiki page Nigel and I'd also like to start talking about the practicalities of presenting the project work.

This is a first stab at a suggested structure - let's use it as a start point for discussion?

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.

Second Life is a virtual environment created and managed by Linden Labs.

Here are some links to resources discussing Second Life and some with screenshots. If you find any more please feel free to add them here.

Second Life - Official site

Wikipedia page

Reuters on Second Life

Times Online report on Second Life

Get a first life

Daily Telegrah piece about property in Second Life

Google video about Second Life

 

ABSTRACT

Linden Lab is the producer of Second Life, an online world with a

growing population of subscribers (or "residents"); currently, the

community has well over 140,000 residents from 91 countries. By

providing residents with robust building and scripting tools, Linden

Lab enables them to create a vast array of in-world objects,

installations and programs. Since its early stages, Linden Lab has

allowed its residents to retain full IP rights over their own

creations, thereby insuring that their contributions to the community

remain truly their own.

 

 

http://www.rheingold.com/vc/book/1.html (Search the page for "Blair Newman")

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0CE0DD1F3FF935A1575BC0A966958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print

http://books.google.com/books?id=ya7LjoUlymAC&pg=PA97&lpg=PA97&dq=%22blair+newman%22+suicide&source=web&ots=GnwlNkRoL-&sig=AtbhYANE0NbCyUK5kBmYnt9xhL8#PPA97,M1

http://muse.tau.ac.il/maslool/boidem/74newman.html

http://www.comedia.com/people/blair/