I really enjoyed the Bell paper on community. It tackled the notion of community itself, and once again highlights a set of polarized arguments about cyberculture- this time whether an online community is actually a community at all, and whether it is a great thing or the ruination of modern life as we know it.

Again the topic is so broad that I find myself agreeing with elements from both camps, but for me again it just adds to the idea of how overwhelming and incomprehensible this phenomenon of cyberspace/culture is. I have found great vibrant and passionate communities online, but has it really been at the expense of my real life? If there was no internet would I just be plonked in front of the TV like lots of other people. Is community life (the ‘total community’ version) really suffering or is it the TV broadcasting companies’ revenue that is the real casualty? I tried to recall yesterday the history of my involvement with the internet, tracing from simple email and static webpage surfing to web 2.0 etc. – difficult enough to remember the personal milestones without a google search- but I do know that now I am interacting more with people than I’ve ever done- in a different way yes but being active in a community nonetheless.

I sometimes get frustrated with arguments of the  ‘technology being the death of society’ type as they rarely acknowledge the inevitability of the situation  and  don’t offer real solutions- only  harp back to what once was- ‘the ideal..has an enduring legacy…tinged with nostalgia’. Like most others reading this, I am a city dweller who dislikes the coldness that city life can involve, but can seek out, participate and believe in online activities that take me away from this if needs be. Isn’t this just a basic human trait anyway- the web (esp. 2.0) has just been another avenue through which humans can form connections and interact, and it is just another branch in evolution. It might even be argued in time to come that survival of the species was dependent on adapting to such a change as weaker  non-adapters will be left behind (been reading Darwin lately so forgive the grandiose notion!). Society had been changed completely anyway, away from that ‘ideal’, before the internet took over, but things like us imposing social codes, netiquette etc. in these new places shows how we are humanising the land of 1’s and 0’s (isn’t the ‘real-world’ just an example of us humanising the land of atoms and electrons anyway?)

I think the idea of a ‘heightened reflexivity’ is really interesting- making choices about who we are because we have so much at our disposal-  our online identities and how they will develop over time should prove interesting as most people are still getting comfortable with this and developing a sense of the online self. An analogy I hadn’t heard before was cyberspace as a ’social petri dish (Rheingold)- a place where, as he says elsewhere, people get together and do what they normally do when they get together. Couple this with some of the ideas discussed in the previous weeks and we enter again into the utopia/dystopia territory.

Some of the arguments put forward in the ‘against online community’ section reflect the age of the paper (2001)- at this stage was the main research perhaps into the virtual world of online games etc.? – such a standpoint might underpin the ‘world gone wrong’ scenario and us taking refuge in this new space. I think the notion at the moment is less of a retreat from the RL, but a brighter one of the integration of both. We have the gadgets, broadband and easy-to-use web 2 tools to integrate them both now- out in the open and everyware- not just holed up in the bedroom in front of a screen.

In questioning the meaning of community, I thought the idea of ‘neo-tribes’ and ‘bund’ to be a way forward, instead of trying to pin down a definition for community- ‘An elective grouping, bonded by affective and emotional solidarity, sharing a strong sense of belonging’- putting the onus on words like ‘energy’ and ‘commitment’.

Plenty to mull over in this paper. Now on to the next one…