Online Communities v.s.
Classical Communities
By Aaron Davidson
“There is nothing more fraught with risk than an idea
before its time,
nor is there anything more powerful than an idea whose
time has come.”
- Anonymous
Introduction:
A common theme which
neo-luddites and other technological naysayers often recite
is that personal computers and more specifically the
internet, are destroying communities. This is a loaded
statement, so much of this paper will be spent dissecting
it and determining its meaning and value, if any.
There are many questions that should be raised in response to the claim that the internet is destroying communities:
Definition of Community :
I want to draw attention to
the essence of what a community is. When internet critics
speak of community, they refer to the definition of
community as a group of people who live together in close
physical proximity. I will refer to this type of community
as a Classic Community. The more general essence of
community is a group of people which share a common
interest. This more flexible definition encompasses both
physical communities as well as more intangible communities
such as special interest clubs and online communities.
To paraphrase U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart's famous comment about defining obscenity, online communities are difficult to describe, but you know them when you see them. Before TidBITS Talk, we felt a sense of community around TidBITS, but we weren't sure to what extent our readers felt they were participating. Since its creation, TidBITS Talk has coalesced into a true online community that keeps members coming back both for the information and the sense of belonging.
— Adam C. Engst, TidBITS #477
A new kind of community, not a culture, is coming. The difference between a culture and a community is that a culture is one-way — you can absorb it by reading it, by watching it — but you have to invest back in a community. Absent this return investment, it’s not really a community. People will be investing in sharing content and sending messages to each other, in spending time together, and, in part, that’s what builds these communities.
— Esther Dyson in Digerati (Brockman)
The Decline of the Classic Community:
The ideals of the
Classic Community are rarely seen these days. We no longer
know our neighbors, and we lock our doors at all times. We
no longer know our neighbors because our busy stress filled
lifestyles do not give us the time. We lock our doors and
have little trust in our communities because crime is
epidemic.
We don’t need our
neighbors because we can network with the world at large.
We now have a much larger sample of individuals to choose
our friends from than we could years before. Why become
friends with members of our community which is based solely
on geographical proximity? The probability of there being an
individual living in your community which is interested in
exactly the kinds of things you are is much smaller than
the probability of that person being elsewhere
geographically.
Imagine you are into
astrophysics. In a Classic Community, you have Bob who
lives across the street. He likes Star Trek, and
that’s about as deep as you can get with him on the
topic of astrophysics. Frank, the next door neighbor is a
jock, and only talks about sports and fast cars. John two
doors down is a doctor and has no time for or interest in
either sports, Star Trek, or astrophysics.
Being able to network
with people on a global scale instantly solves your
dilemma. Now you can search for people with your interests
from all over the world. There are countless web pages,
usenet discussion forums, mailing lists, and real-time chat
rooms for astrophysics enthusiasts to discuss their theories
and ideas.
But is the ability to
network globally the cause of the decline in Classic
Community? The Classic Community has been in decline for
decades, and is probably more a result of capitalism, and
social change. Anti-social behavior is more likely a
result of bad parenting and poverty than internet escapism.
If anything is to be blamed, television should be mentioned
long before the personal computer. Television is completely
anti-social and generally anti-intellectual. The Internet is
fundamentally a social and interactive medium, often rich in
intellectual content.
The movement away from
the traditional 1950’s stereotypical community of
suburbs and white picket fences where the families held
barbecues in their backyards with their neighbors began
long before the personal computer allowed people to escape
into computer games and later, the internet. Perhaps the
internet is our savior, appearing on the scene at just the
moment it was needed most, and rescued us from our decaying
communities. The internet provides a safe and convenient way
for people to be social.
Another common criticism
of the internet is that of the “Wallmart effect”,
where online shopping and entertainment drives local
community based businesses out of the market. While this
may sound negative, from a consumer’s point of view,
this is not a bad thing. The internet empowers consumers to
get the best prices and deals possible. If a local business
cannot offer an advantage, the forces of competition should
put it out of business. Businesses should keep up with the
times; if they want to remain competitive they will need to
compete globally.
The Utility of the Classic Community
The Classic Community
exists and existed in the past for some very good reasons.
Humans must bond together physically for safety and for
social fulfillment. Being close to your neighbors is a
great help in emergencies — the ice storms in Eastern
Canada and the USA in 1998 reminded many communities of how
useful they could be in trying times. Thousands of homes
were left without power for weeks. Families moved in
together and shared their supplies and electric generators
with one another, and entire communities bonded closer
together. Certainly emergencies like this prove the utility
of the Classic Community. However, these are exceptional
circumstances. What is the utility of the Classic Community
in everyday life? The obvious uses are those which require
physical proximity. Infrastructure for services and
commodities is difficult to obtain without the density of
urban cities and towns. This continues to be the primary
reason for Classic Community. These obvious functions are
not what critics are worried about. It is the social aspect
with which they are concerned. The only social things I can
name that cannot be done online are sexual reproduction and
physical sports.
The Rise of the Online Community
An Online Community can
be though of as a Mental Community, which places it neatly
in opposition to the Classical or Physical Community. Due
to the nature of the media, there are many different types
of Online Communities. I will try to briefly outline and
compare each of the major mediums.
I could keep extending
this list with new types of internet communities, because
they are springing up amongst the 43 million connected
computers on the internet as fast as I can write about them.
Case Study: The Extropy
Mailing List:
I chose to examine the
Extropian online
community for two reasons. The first is that I am involved
in the community and so I am equipped to discuss it
properly. The second is that the content of the list is
diametrically opposed to technophobia.
Extropianism is a branch
of Transhumanist
Philosophy. The name comes from the desire to maximize
extropy and minimize entropy in the universe. Extropians
believe in dynamic optimism, lean politically towards
libertarianism, and are fans of ultra technology (nanotechnology,
advanced computer technology and AI, life extension and cryonics,
genetic engineering, human-machine transcendence, and so
on).
The list is high traffic
— typically around 10-20 messages a day. The list is
home to some of the most diverse and intelligent people I
know — philosophers, neuroscientists, computer
scientists, modern artists and engineers, to name a few.
Discussions range from the relatively mundane topics of
gun-control, computability of consciousness, and colonizing
mars to the wildly speculative consequences of medical
immortality and apocalyptic nanotechnology.
This is such a valuable
community, and it would be impossible without the internet.
Such a diverse and knowledgeable group of people could never
hope to find each other in the same geographical community.
Members are distributed globally from at least 3
continents.
Some of the topics on
the list are pretty shocking and controversial by the
standards of general society. Extropians discuss these
ideas freely and openly, without batting an eye. The
anonymity of the internet mailing list is what makes this
possible. Below is an example of a typical posting to the
list:
Date: Fri, 26 Mar 1999 18:13:55 -0800
From: Spike Jones <spike66@ibm.net>
To: extropians@extropy.com
Subject: why do we need 30 women?
> Lee Daniel Crocker wrote: ... -you can create [a Mars colony]
> from scratch in a century or two starting with, say, 30
> or 40 young, healthy, genetically diverse women and
> a big dewar of sperm....Altho it presents some extreme difficulties, could we not start a Mars society with a single woman and a bunch of ethnically diverse frozen embryos? Could not the single crosser of interplanetary space have her birth canal surgically enlarged before launch in order to facilitate giving birth by herself after self implanting an embryo some time after it starts looking like she will survive on the surface? It appears to me that all the mission requirements scale to the size of the astronaut. Our best bet might be a single very small woman, perhaps one with no legs, whose weight might be 30 kilos or less. spike
The Extropian Mailing List is a vibrant piece of the
larger Extropian Community. The Extropian Community is a
large part of the internet Transhumanist Community. While
Online Communities are excellent resources for people, they
cannot fully supplement real social interaction (at least
until the technology improves to make virtual reality and
video conferencing practical). Even with all of these
communities, the need for face-to-face contact is
important. All tight online communities, be they based on
news groups, mailing lists, or irc channels, tend to hold
annual conferences where members may meet one another in
person. EXTRO4
is a conference in august taking place in
Berkeley California. While it is directed at the larger
Extropian Community and not just the list members, many
list members will attend to meet each other in person and
to network with one another at a more personal level.
A New Medium Emerges
The emergence of the internet has been compared to the
invention of the printing press. It has revolutionized our
abilities to deal with information, to network with each
other, and to socialize. The changes which it will force
upon society will be astronomical. Society has an inertia,
a resistance to change but the power of the digital realm
will win this fight. The internet has given us a new medium
for social activities, opening up entirely new dimensions of
social reality. Online Communities all can provide new
social experiences to explore which were once impossible.
That being said, Online Communities provide new dimensions
and enhance existing ones, but they do lack many dimensions
of face-to-face social interaction. A healthy individual
will still interact with people on a person to person
basis, but will be able to expand their social horizons
into cyberspace. And, as technology continues to improve at
an exponential rate, the virtual will take on more and more
of the missing dimensions of social interaction. Perhaps
one day, we will not even be able to distinguish between
the real and the virtual.
FOOTNOTES:
I am not a stranger to the online world of Chat
Programs. My first experiences of online chat were in 1994
on America OnLine. Later, I delved into MOOs and
MUD’s for a few years. I spent most of the ninth and
tenth grade down in my basement with my corporeal online
friends. My high school years were fraught with social
dysfunction, and provided me an outlet which I had
difficulty realizing in the real world. Luckily, I
eventually matured and developed social skills by the time
I graduated and embarked on my voyage into the real world.
I still occasion IRC channels, but I am by no means
addicted. I use it primarily to keep in touch with old
friends back home, and not to replace any kind of social
gap in my life.
Appendix - selected postings from the Extropian Mailing List
References
Baase, Sara. A Gift of Fire: Social, Legal, and Ethical Issues in Computing. 1997. Prentice-Hall, New Jersey.
Brockman, John. Digerati: Encounters With the Cyber Elite.1996. HardWired, San Francisco.
Dery, Mark. Flame Wars: The Discourse of Cyberculture. 1994. Duke University Press.
Turkle, Sherry. Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet. 1995. Simon & Shuster, New York.