Lecture
Virtual Communities
This week
Thinking-through
1.Marshall McLuhan's global village thesis,
2.Virtual communities
3.Networks
Aims of lecture
• To develop an
understanding of
virtual communities,
global village thesis
and notions of the
network
Reading for this week
• Reading and viewing the Global Village
• Marshall McLuhan's 'Global Village‘ By Benjamin Symes
• Danah Boyd, (2007) Viewing American class divisions through
Facebook and MySpace
• Mark Wigley “Network Fever” in Wendy Chun (2006) New Media/Old
Media (London & New York: Routledge, pp. 375-397 (italics added)
• Nicholas Carr’s controversial The Web Shatters Focus, Rewires Brains
published in Wired
Part One:
The global village, virtual
communities, and network fever
Decoding Google Images
Decoding the global village
Decoding the global village
Decoding the global village
Decoding the global village
The Global Village Thesis
• A rosy picture?
• A more realistic view
from McLuhan?
• See also McLuhan’s
CBS interview with
McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan - Understanding
Media (1964)
• “After three thousand years of explosion, by means of fragmentary
and mechanical technologies, the Western world is imploding.”
• “During the mechanical ages we had extended our bodies in space.
Today, after more than a century of electric technology, we have
extended our central nervous system itself in a global embrace,
abolishing both space and time as far as our planet is concerned.”
• “Rapidly, we approach the final phase of the extensions of man - the
technological simulation of consciousness, when the creative process
of knowing will be collectively and corporately extended to the whole
of human society, much as we have already extended our senses and
our nerves by the various media.” McLuhan, 1964 p. 16
What does McLuhan mean?
• "All media are extensions of
some human faculty- psychic or
physical"
The Medium is The Massage, Marshall McLuhan p 26
• “…the wheel is an extension of
the foot, the book is an
extension of the eye, clothing,
an extension of the skin,
electric circuitry, an extension
of the central nervous system"
The Medium is The Massage, Marshall McLuhan p
31-40
• Media as an extension of
“man”
Media:
as an extension
Sending messages
corresponding to
your five senses
Sight
Hearing
Touch
Smell
Taste
central nervous system
Network Communication
new cognitive and sensory connections
What kind of brain is the Web giving us?
• “Dozens of studies by
psychologists, neurobiologists,
and educators point to the
same conclusion: When we go
online, we enter an
environment that promotes
cursory reading, hurried and
distracted thinking, and
superficial learning. Even as the
Internet grants us easy access
to vast amounts of
information, it is turning us into
shallower thinkers, literally
changing the structure of our
brain.”
Read Wired article adapted from Nicholas Carr, (2010) The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, W.W. Norton and Company
The Academic Debate:
Back in the 1990s
• Whereas we now
commonly refer to
social networks like
Facebook and
MySpace back in the
1990s academics
questioned the notion
of a virtual community
Early Communities
• Usenet – 1979-80 –
newsgroups
– Duke University in US
• WELL (Whole Earth
'Lectronic Link) 1985 –
BBS, ISP and Webbased
Real versus Virtual
meatspace versus virtualspace
Real versus Virtual
meatspace versus virtualspace
• Reality
• Virtuality
•
•
•
•
•
•
• hypothetical
• artificial
• experienced through
sensory stimuli
fixed
permanent
immovable
not artificial
not fraudulent
not illusory
Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary
http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary
So what is a community?
So what is a community?
• Unified body of
individuals
• The local community
• The community as a
whole
• The international
community
• The academic community
• Virtual community
• An interacting
population of various
kinds of individuals in
a common location
• Munis = bound
together
http://www.m-w.com/dictionary.htm
Can communities exist online?
• Whether or not
people can share
‘community’ online
was hotly contested
The debate back in the 1990s…
‘In two years, there will be more network users than
residents of any state in the United States. In five years
there will be more network users than citizens of any single
country except India or China. What will happen when
McLuhan's global village becomes one of the largest
countries in the world? Using two-way communications,
not broadcast? And crossing boundaries of space, time, and
politics?’
(Rheingold in 1993)
Check and see
http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm
Download and read ‘Chapter Two: Daily Life in Cyberspace’:
http://www.well.com/user/hlr/vcbook/
Optimists
‘Virtual Communities’
•
Howard Rheingold, 1993 The Virtual Community
• ‘People in virtual communities
do just about everything
people do in real life, but we
leave our bodies behind.’
•
•
•
•
argue
conduct commerce
exchange knowledge
brainstorm
•
•
•
•
•
gossip
flirt
fall in love
play games
create a little high art and a lot
of idle talk
Optimists
‘Virtual Communities’
• Rheingold refers to
computer mediated
spaces
• ‘online brain trusts’
• Community as
– Extension of the
nervous system (McLuhan)
– Collective Intelligence
(Levy)
• ‘computer-assisted
groupminds’
Pessimists
‘Virtual Communities’
•
Clifford Stoll, 1995. Silicon Snake Oil
• feeling of permanence
• a sense belonging
• a sense of location
• ‘Gone is the very essence
of a neighbourhood’
• ‘What’s missing from this
ersatz (imitation, substitute)
neighbourhood?’
• friendly relations
• a sense of ‘being’
The Big Guns from Sociology
and the problem
with
a sense of ‘being’
• Shared proximity or
social presence
• The social presence or
the sense of
‘otherness’
Anthony Giddens, 1995
• No evidence of
meaningful sense of
reciprocal
responsibility or
mutual obligation
Neil Postman, 1993
The Virtual as
Escapism?
• Optimists…
• Pessimists…
• Virtual communities a utopian ‘escape’ or
‘release’ us from a
world that…
• The ‘death of distance’
is a crisis…
• ‘…seems to get more
complex and more
overwhelming [and]
ever more scary’
(Esther Dyson, 1997 pp. 31-33)
(Robins & Webster 1999 pp. 238-260)
• The Global Village is a
Dystopia
Need to…
• ‘relocate virtual culture
in the real world’
(Kevin Robins in Dovey, 1996 p. 26)
In the 21st century
networks surround us
•
I’m getting bored with Facebook
•
http://www.rebelvirals.com/high/index.html#/rageagainst-the-mundane/
Recent debate
• More recently academics have moved on
from questions about
– Real versus Virtual
• and
– Can community exist online?
Facebook Politics
Social Network Research
• Viewing American
class divisions
through Facebook
and MySpace
• Danah Boyd, June 24,
2007
• http://www.danah.org/papers/
essays/ClassDivisions.html
Facebook and MySpace
• "hegemonic teens“
• “subaltern teens“
• The dominant
influence
• Outside the
dominant influence
• Meaning teens
• Alternatives
under the
dominant influence
Social Space is Network Space
Network Fever
Mark Wigley
Network Fever
• ‘We are constantly surrounded by talk
of networks. Every third message,
article, and advertisement seems to be
about one network or another. We are
surrounded, that is, by talk on
networks about networks.’
•
Mark Wigley “Network Fever” in Wendy Chun, in New Media/Old Media (London & New York: Routledge, 2006) pp.
375-397 (italics added)
Network Fever
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Computer
Television
Telephone
Airline
Radio
Beeper
Bank
[Social network]
[Terror network]
Mark Wigley “Network Fever” in Wendy Chun, in New Media/Old Media (London & New York: Routledge, 2006) pp. 375-397
Scales of Networks
Global (wide area)
National
Infra (wireless)
Local Area
Home (residential)
Mark Wigley “Network Fever” in Wendy Chun, in New Media/Old
Media (London & New York: Routledge, 2006) pp. 375-397
Modes of Network
Internet
Web
Wireless
Mobile
Optical
GPS – [Global
Positioning System]
Mark Wigley “Network Fever” in Wendy Chun, in New Media/Old Media
(London & New York: Routledge, 2006) pp. 375-397
GPS networks allow interactive mediascapes
Network Space
•‘Space itself can only be
seen when caught in the
net’
Mark Wigley “Network Fever” in Wendy Chun, in New Media/Old Media (London & New York: Routledge, 2006) pp. 375-397
Network Fever
• ‘In celebrating this
new kind of territory,
we recast questions of
individual identity in
terms of unimaginable
levels of connectivity,
ignoring the equally
dramatic rise of new
forms of
inaccessibility’
inaccessibility
New Network Discourse
•
•
•
•
Openness
Democracy
Free exchange
Speed
Dominates over that of
•
•
•
•
Control
Surveillance
Blockage
Crime
Mark Wigley “Network Fever” in Wendy Chun, in New Media/Old Media
(London & New York: Routledge, 2006) pp. 375-397
Coming Weeks
Communication Models
Interactivity
Convergence
Hypertext