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Lecture Virtual Communities

This week Thinking-through Marshall McLuhan's global village thesis, Virtual communities Networks. Lecture Virtual Communities. To develop an understanding of virtual communities, global village thesis and notions of the network. Aims of lecture. Reading for this week.

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Lecture Virtual Communities

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  1. This week Thinking-through Marshall McLuhan's global village thesis, Virtual communities Networks LectureVirtual Communities

  2. To develop an understanding of virtual communities, global village thesis and notions of the network Aims of lecture

  3. 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

  4. Part One: The global village, virtual communities, and network fever

  5. Decoding Google Images

  6. Decoding the global village

  7. Decoding the global village

  8. Decoding the global village

  9. Decoding the global village

  10. The Global Village Thesis • A rosy picture? • A more realistic view from McLuhan? • See also McLuhan’s CBS interview with McLuhan

  11. 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

  12. 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”

  13. Sending messages corresponding to your five senses Sight Hearing Touch Smell Taste Media: as an extension

  14. central nervous system

  15. Network Communicationnew cognitive and sensory connections

  16. 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

  17. 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

  18. Early Communities • Usenet – 1979-80 – newsgroups • Duke University in US • WELL (Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link) 1985 – BBS, ISP and Web-based

  19. Real versus Virtualmeatspace versus virtualspace

  20. Reality fixed permanent immovable not artificial not fraudulent not illusory Virtuality hypothetical artificial experienced through sensory stimuli Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary Real versus Virtualmeatspace versus virtualspace http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary

  21. So what is a community?

  22. 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 So what is a community? http://www.m-w.com/dictionary.htm

  23. Whether or not people can share ‘community’ online was hotly contested Can communities exist online?

  24. 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/

  25. 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’

  26. Rheingold refers to computer mediated spaces ‘online brain trusts’ ‘computer-assisted groupminds’ Community as Extension of the nervous system (McLuhan) Collective Intelligence (Levy) Optimists ‘Virtual Communities’

  27. Clifford Stoll, 1995. Silicon Snake Oil ‘What’s missing from this ersatz (imitation, substitute) neighbourhood?’ feeling of permanence a sense belonging a sense of location ‘Gone is the very essence of a neighbourhood’ friendly relations a sense of ‘being’ Pessimists‘Virtual Communities’

  28. Shared proximity or social presence The social presence or the sense of ‘otherness’ Anthony Giddens, 1995 The Big Guns from Sociologyand the problemwith a sense of ‘being’ • No evidence of meaningful sense of reciprocal responsibility or mutual obligation Neil Postman, 1993

  29. Optimists… Virtual communities - a utopian ‘escape’ or ‘release’ us from a world that… ‘…seems to get more complex and more overwhelming [and] ever more scary’ (Esther Dyson, 1997 pp. 31-33) Pessimists… The ‘death of distance’ is a crisis… (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) The Virtual asEscapism?

  30. In the 21st century networks surround us • I’m getting bored with Facebook • http://www.rebelvirals.com/high/index.html#/rage-against-the-mundane/

  31. Recent debate • More recently academics have moved on from questions about • Real versus Virtual • and • Can community exist online?

  32. Facebook Politics

  33. Social Network Research • Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace • Danah Boyd, June 24, 2007 • http://www.danah.org/papers/essays/ClassDivisions.html

  34. Facebook and MySpace • "hegemonic teens“ • The dominant influence • Meaning teens under the dominant influence • “subaltern teens“ • Outside the dominant influence • Alternatives

  35. Social Space is Network Space

  36. Network Fever Mark Wigley

  37. 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)

  38. 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

  39. 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

  40. 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

  41. GPS networks allow interactive mediascapes

  42. 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

  43. 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’

  44. inaccessibility

  45. 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

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