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Technology

Rethinking Virtual Community: Part Three 59

Posted by JonKatz from the --redesigning-cyberville- dept.
Virtual communities that only offer information, data and text-based messaging are sometimes fragmented, brittle and cold. They don't allow the kind of sequential communications and storytelling vital to any community, work or personal. Those that emphasize human contact are too limited. The Virtual Community of tomorrow may have to incorporate both. (This is the third in a series.)

So where does that leave the Virtual Community, alive or dead or in between?

The idea remains as powerful as ever, flamers, spammers, vandals, dotcoms or no. Lots of people, from medical patients and programmers to gay teenagers to gamers and quilters are seeking and finding small communities to attach themselves to. But the virtual community clearly needs some serious re-thinking, both in technological and human terms.

Many people online are nostalgic about the idea.

E-mailed chauf:

"I look back to the days of BBS's and the one I frequented the most was like its own neighborhood. You usually knew the various folks... of course some were more visible than others, much like real life. I use the analogy of a local bar.. a la 'Cheers'. That's what many of the local BBSes were like...

" Even though there was this computerized place there was still an emphasis on meeting in person at various GT's or Get Togethers. When I was in high school it was one of the local roller rinks. Often we'd have a weekend barbeque at a park where everyone could attend. We also had more deviant activities like Electric Jello parties. Electric Jello is Jello made normally but you'd take out a 1/4 of the water in the recipe and put in Everclear...

" So here you'd have these hammered, underage computer folks! It was a riot ... One of my favorite people I met during these years was a gentleman named Al ... Al was a old biker. He had to be in his mid-thirties when I met him. He was extremely articulate and intelligent and it came across in his postings. He was also an avid game player ... with a bend towards computer war games/simulations. None of us know what he looked like in person so it was QUITE a shock when we met in person. Here was this large, tattooed, long haired biker. It sent my perception of how people are on its ear. I learned to never really truly judge folks by what they look like, rather by their actions ... Virtual communites are possible. They will never replace face to face meeting but they can open the doors to such meetings and communication."

Chauf's experience is typical of many people's feelings about virtual communities. They may work best as a cross between the WELL model and the later information-swapping exchange. The new virtual community has several primary obstacles to overcome:

First, as predicted by almost every sci-fi writer, the megacorporations are moving to dominate the virtual community. the corporate world sees the Net as its primary communications medium, and the key to participating and prospering in the global economy. They have the money, political clout and legal acumen to dominate the network, as is already becoming clear. The Net is not viewed by the outside as being healthy or weak in terms of the strength of its virtual communities, but the rise or fall of NASDAQ on any given day. The idea of a tech boom or, more recently, a tech decline is entirely related to corporate earnings in tech industries and elements online.

The function of the corporate virtual community has tended to emphasize sales, period, and corporations seek to control access, content, intellectual property and usage. But the original notion of the virtual community was very different. Businesses may not actively try to eliminate other kinds of virtual communties, but they end up supplanting or marginalizing them anyway, in much the same way Microsoft or Wal-Mart eliminates its competitiion. In any contest between corporatism and community, the former seems to win hands down every time, which puts the idea of the virtual community in particular danger.

Despite the pressures of the blessedly waning dotcom era, there are things the virtual community can take from business communications. In The Social Life of Information (Harvard University Press), John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid talk about the importance of office communications, especially face to face stories. These kind of human-to-human narrative involves constant story-telling; about problems and solutions, disasters and triumphs and, say the authors, serves a number overlapping purposes. Workers "tell stories about unsolved problems in an attempt to generate a coherent account of what the problem is and how to solve it. They may do this individually, putting their own story together. Or they can do it collectively, as they drawn on the collective wisdom of the group."

F2F stories, Brown and Duguid remind us, are good at presenting things sequentially (this happened, then that). They are also good for presenting them casually (this happened because of that). "Thus stories are a powerful means to understand what happened (the sequence of events) and why (the causes of those events)." This kind of storytelling is indispensable for workers for whom these are critical issues of concern.

The virtual community is just beginning to experiment with the online equivalent of the real-life office environment, mostly in live chat and messaging forms. But the kind of sequential, coherent narrative describe by Brown and Duguid is still difficult online, especially in the text-based, asynchronious communications forms most people use.

In addition, adolescent flamers -- almost invariably young males -- continue to disrupt and distort efforts to create online communities. Rarely as numerous as they seem to be, they cause others to lurk rather than participate, and create the sort of mistrust and tension that make community nearly impossible. They almost demand some form of censorship and moderation, which makes noxious restrictions on speech easier to justify. Successful new weblogs (camworld.com is one of the best weblogs online) are created with an eye towards limiting membership, controlling submissions and the nature of disagreement -- the sort of change that's both sensible and tragic.

The dilemma is that younger Net users are among the smartest, most technologically-sophisticated people online. If they bring hostility, they also bring creativity and energy. Losing them would be an enormous loss. Still, there needs to be a heightened sense of responsibility for the words people post. If the posters don't acquire one themselves, then the operators and members of virtual communities have to start doing it themselves, challenging hostile communicators more directly.

There's also a possible silver lining. Since technology is the most powerful social and cultural force in the contemporary world, ascendant virtual communities have tended to focus on it.But if the tech world really is in a slump, if the explosive growth and pace of technological change slows and dwindling venture capital winnows the dotcoms, advocates for virtual community might once more find some breathing room.

The new online community may have to draw from some of the most traditional, non-tech elements of society: the water cooler, the backyard fence, the tavern, the neighborhood park, even the office itself. All of these gathering spots tend to cement community, forge relationships, provide the human and contextual cues that help people resolve disputes, receive information,communicate in a civil way, learn new ideas. It is precisely these kinds of one-on-one communications forums that are missing in so many VC's (though increasingly, applets for live chats are popping up on places like AOL and everything2).

Maybe online communities of the future could work this way: Napster or a site like this one would exist as an information exchange, but would also build into its architecture a face-to-face component -- perhaps video-conferencing, chat and messaging rooms, local or state chapters that actually meet.

Members would encounter other members when they joined and when they participated in online discussions. Sites could also organize face to face gatherings and activities so that the two major goals of the new virtual community -- community and information -- would both be available. As with any successful community, members would be asked to participate in the functioning of the site -- moderating, writing, reviewing, suggesting topics, relaying information, working on software design, trouble-shooting and problem-solving. Membership committees could consider and respond to complaints and suggestions, which might reduce the instinct for flaming.

The virtual community of the future seems likely to be some version of a weblog that uses the Net's distributed architecture to provode access to information. But communities are more likely to succeed, grow and endure when human elements are also incorporated into their structure. Chat rooms, IRC's, video-meetings and human contact are ultimately as essential to a virtual community as data. Notice that Chauf recalls his friend the biker more than the topics on his BBS. People connect with humans in a way they don't yet connect with data, an idea overlooked in Web design and architecture.

In part, Rheingold's dream of the virtual community -- as embodied by the WELL -- seemed posible because there wasn't all that much to do online. Today, people get overwhelmed with e-mail, chat forums, entertainment and hopping online. The virtual community seems almost an afterthought.

For all its problems and failed expectations, the Virtual Community, one of the most compelling ideas to emerge from cyberspace, still seems a fantasy. The VC needs to be rethought rather than abandoned, redesigned rather than nostalgically recalled.

Next: Your thoughts on how to reconceive the Virtual Community.
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Part Three: Rethinking Virtual Community More

Part Three: Rethinking Virtual Community

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  • Virtual Community Part N ## +1 ; Unique ## (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Who cares? I don't. Thank you and have a Happy New Year!

    Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

  • What about a virtual environment? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The thing about virtual communities is it allows people to skip the F2F thing (although it can come later, and many times does.) The only thing that really determines who you are in a virtual community is your mind. Yes there are some people that are more popular then others, but is popularity the point of a virtual community?

    Why video conferencing? Its not useless, but there are some serious downsides. You can sit half-naked at your computer on IRC or a message board, but you can't exactly be naked when you video-conference (ok, well there are certian exceptions).

    F2F is more tied with emotional responses, which is not exactly something you always want if your trying to exchange large amounts of detailed and accurate information.

    So what about using a virtual environment? Yes, something like Palace, or more like a MMORPG like EverQuest (but without so much of the gaming elements). Virtual environments tend to draw people first because of the way they look. The people who inhabit virtual environments determine how long everyone stays.

    Yet mabey text is still better in certain ways? After all, we are in the year 2000, but theres still millions of people using text-based communication. We have the technology for a fancy 3D community, but its just not quite there.

    I first came upon this article many years ago, but mabey some people would be interested in reading about a virtual environment from the mid-80s http://www.xnet2.com/neslon/online/habitat.html

  • I can't believe.. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    .. that you'd write a three-part article on communities in cyberspace, and not even include cyberspace.org [cyberspace.org] in your research.

    Here is a thriving virtual community, democratically run, structurally almost unchanged since it hooked up to the internet in 1994. It is a 501(c)3 non-profit, does not charge users for access (although voting membership and certain resource usages require a nominal fee and id authentication), and serves nearly 30,000 users around the world from its basement closet in Ann Arbor.

    Perhaps you should check it out as a potential model before you write the next installment.

  • Re:let me try this, (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    What is a monket?

  • So is text good, or not? (Score:5)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 28, 2000 @08:30AM (#1416019)
    So, the golden age of adventure gaming was Infocom, where all you got was a text description of a room and had to use your imagination. But the virtual community is limited because of the primarily text-based interaction model?

    The thing I've always loved about online relationships (pun not intended) was that, at least in the past, you had a high hit rate of finding "kindred spirits". In the real world the first thing you experience is a person's height, weight, breath, and so on, and no matter how highly you think of yourself, you're going to make judgements on those things (subconciously or otherwise). But in the online world the first time you meet a person you're running into her thoughts and opinions. Her mind. It's ironic that in the real world people always talk about "I wish people would look past the physical and look at the real me", but when a medium is available that enables people to do that, they denounce it as too impersonal.

  • Referring to the paragraph starting with: "In addition, adolescent flamers -- almost invariably young males -- continue to disrupt and distort efforts to create online communities."

    This has been one of the reasons I have stopped reading some newsgroups and mailing lists. While filtering in a mail reader could help some, the use of filtering software on the server may help even more. If there is a person that is being disruptive, one that I would prefer not receive my posts or I theirs, I could add that person's email address to my exclusion list. Any new message I send to the list server would be forwarded to everyone on the list except those in my exclusion list. Similar to a client-side filter, any message an exluded person may send to the list would not be forwarded to me by the server. An additional piece of software could periodically check the exclusion lists of all subscribers. If a certain percentage level is reached for any one person, that individual could be automatically unsubscribed or at least sent a warning message to the effect of "You have been excluded by X percent of subscribers."

    Guaranteed to work? Of course not. But, if it makes it more inconvenient for those considered undesirable, it may help a little. I would guess that most flamers do so for the attention. Perhaps removing that attention can remove the incentive or just encourage them to move them to another venue.

  • I've been toying around with and experimenting with virtual communities for a while, and there's one interesting community that truly does have a as high a level of discourse as you could want: the weblog community. I wrote an essay entitled Weblog Communities [editthispage.com] exploring the nature of the communities, and why it works so well. (As I believe it was Dave Winer who said, it really helps that every has their own little area, rather then a communal area that is easy to pollute.)

    To further enhance the connections, I created the LinkBack [editthispage.com] program, to help independent websites see when someone has linked to them.

    Much of what Katz said is essentially true, though I believe he really belabored the point. We've been using message boards in one form or another for the past 20 years, and we can all see how well that works. Perhaps a different approach altogether is what is called for.

  • Having read the article and some of the replies, I think I have a point to make about the subject.

    It seems like some people have the notion that the "Internet killed the BBSs", that because of the fact that any random Joe can now log on, that the internet is less of the 'virtual community' that used to exist... Not true.

    People form social groups with others that the notion of spending time with appeals to them. This is usually expressed in the form of shared interests. This happens in any society, virtual or real. I go to a school with higher acceptance criteria, among other things, because the people there are more to my liking. I share interests with more of them, they're more intelligent, and there's no real need to deal with the bullies ('Trolls' of the online communities)

    The same thing happens online. People choose what communities they become part of. Personally, I play on a mud, which is a truly great virtual community. The people there are significantly more intelligent than those I meet on ICQ's Random Chat. I have shared interests with much more of them. Just like in real life.

    The 'online community' didn't become of a 'lower class'... the geeks still hang around here. There's still smart people around. The communities are still here. You just have to look for them, just like you have to look for a good school.

    Naturally, when a community grows larger, it splits into sub-communities. It happens in any social frame. So when a community you were a part of seems to inflate with people you don't find to your liking, always try and find the sub-community you like in there. It should be there most of the time.

  • "They are also good for presenting them casually (this happened because of that)."

    The word is "causally" -- although I've never tried to put the "-ly" suffix on the root of "causality".

  • Forgot the paragraph breaks. My bad ...
  • The problem with the virtual community is anonymity. Even if we aren't really anonymous (we CAN be tracked down), it doesn't feel that way. With the lack of any real-world repercussions for our actions, many self-esteem challenged people become complete assholes online. Back in the day of the BBS, most of the folks online were highly intelligent (you had to be), and there was a sense of community through elitism ... we were family because no one else could GET online. I'm still good friends with some of my BBS buddies ... one was even a former roommate and best man at my wedding. Now that the 'Net has gone mainstream, and every Joe Blow with a 14.4K modem and a 486 can get online, that instant sense of community is gone. There is no common bond. More importantly, AOL has removed the intelligence factor for a great deal of 'Net users. I'm not saying all AOL users are idiots ... quite the contrary. It's just that AOL is so ridiculously easy to use, you don't need any computer skills at all to make a nuisance of yourself online. The way I see it, it's the fact that you can't be seen that causes the problem. When webcams are standard issue and used widely for communication over the net, and there is a sense that you can indeed be seen online, people will continue to be jerks, just because they can. There is no sense of community to stop them, and no reason for them to behave.

  • Hellooo.... earth to katz.... hellooo..... (Score:3)

    by SpinyNorman ( 33776 ) on Thursday December 28, 2000 @08:40AM (#1416026)
    Virtual communities that only offer information, data and text-based messaging are sometimes fragmented, brittle and cold. They don't allow the kind of sequential communications and storytelling vital to any community, work or personal. Those that emphasize human contact are too limited. The Virtual Community of tomorrow may have to incorporate both.

    Has Katz ever been part of a virtual community?

    People chat on ICQ both 1-on-1 and in groups, share personal photos, meet each other, form relationships, get married...

    Sequential communications and storytelling? Uh, don't these things always evolve out of message boards....

    (This is the third in a series.)

    And let's hope the last.

  • VC (Score:2)

    by fizban ( 58094 )
    It's not really that the VC idea needs to be rethought, it just needs to continue on it's evolutionary progress...

    The capabilities of the current infrastructure only allow us to do the simple things, like chatting, using messageboards, or simple online gaming like cards. Yes, there are instances where more can be accomplished, where audio and video come into play, but it's very limited and the number of people using those are small. But it is progressing. People want more and better communication, just like they want more and better information, it's just that not everyone has the access to those capabilities and the system can't handle anymore people than it currently does anyway. In 10-15 yrs, we'll get to a point where online meetings can replace those in real life, and that is where things are headed. It's just not ready yet. We don't need to rethink anything. We just need to have patience with the evolution of the systems.

    Until then, we'll continue to augment our online communities with face-to-face RL meetings

    --

  • Just to add a little more information to help for your hidden website for your VC.

    Put a robots.txt file in your root director for your website wtih this information in it:

    User-agent: *
    Disallow: /

    This should tell most (if not all) search engine robots, crawlers, spiders, etc. to not search your website directories.

    It seems to work. Not even Google has my website listed :)

    (Either that, or people really don't visit.)


    --
    Neafevoc

  • But what makes you think that any poster, especially a troll, will allow his real face and voice to appear on /.? Currently only a minority of posters use handles that resemble RL names. I'd expect Quake monsters, rendered LEGO creations, abstract graphic patterns. And for voices: bizarre chirping, growling, mechanoid humming. And that's being optimistic.
    What the trolls would really do is use the sensory-extravaganza web board to blast bestial goatporn in our faces.
    Not to mention all the nasty things trolls/flamers will do with your likeness and voice once they have sufficient samples of them.
    I'm happy with a text based medium, thank you.
  • I don't think anonymity is a problem. In fact, I think /. has reached quite a good equilibrium, with moderation keeping the abusers below my threshold.
    I also don't accept your glib assertion that 'assholes' are self-esteem challenged. They could be motivated by a wide range of factors. Maybe they just enjoy being assholes, to adopt the simplistic explanation.
    In any event, I like the net the way it is and would not enjoy an increase in self-restraint or responsibility. I like how the net directs a torrent of criticism and mockery at any popular idea, for example the GPL. This means the internet won't grow indefensible ideas as 'hothouse flowers' the way the Media/Business/Government thingy is doing.
  • Hmmm interesting that someone complaining about others misuse of the language has a sig with the misuse of the word hacker.
  • Yeah right, and if this kindred spirit you met online was butt, you'd slip out the back.

    It's just as shallow to focus solely on someones mind as it is on their body. A person is the whole package.

  • +1

    I don't understand why the WELL is referred to in such a light that it seems the model (or perfect for that matter) online community. The WELL is very tough to build relationships through, though it is a *good* (not great) medium for discussion.

  • i'd venture to say that most of the readers here LIVED the story he's recanting... either you were the high school student, or you were the biker.

    but then again, commenting on a katz story is almost as self-serving as the katz story itself.
  • eh, you must have the graphics turned off in your browser, as my header for slashdot reads "news for nerds, stuff that matters". i can't think of anything more boring than link after link to linux articles, but that doesn't mean that an article that brings the reader inside what a virtual community is is thought provoking whatsoever to most of the readers here.

    "I know, i'll make a post on /. about virtual communities and see if there's a book in it somehow."

    in case you didn't notice, the reader IS ALREADY IN A VIRTUAL COMMUNITY HERE ON /. but i guess i didn't realize it until i read that article, woo hoo, i'm edumacated now.

    sticks and stones can break my bones but i filter IGMP.

  • They don't allow the kind of sequential communications and storytelling vital to any community, work or personal.

    Wait a minute, isn't this the third part of your article? There's sequential communication in a virtual community for you...

    I think seqential communication is the Internet's strong point. It's much harder to remember who said what at a business meeting than it is to look at a threaded discussion online (for me at least).

  • The geek produces beauty as a byproduct, much like a mathematician who is above all concerned with finding a proof, and is not concerned whether that proof is elegant or not, though it often will be.

    I beg to differ. If one studies mathematics enough to understand it, the vast majority of mathematical proofs are startlingly elegant. I would instead opine that the elegance of good mathematics, engineering, or science differs from art in that significant education and knowledge are required to appreciate the elegance. As an example I would like to cite Einstein's Theory of General Relativity. The mathematical elegance of this theory is so impressive that, combined with its phenomenal predictive accuracy in modelling the real world, the person who formulates the theory which supplants it will be enshrined similarly to Einstein and Newton. The most common comment I have heard from professional physicists about various newer Grand Unified Theories being proposed is that they "lack elegance."

    The greatest difference between the arts and the sciences is that the arts are created with a more generalized population in mind. Almost everyone appreciates the fine arts of Michelangelo or Renoir. It takes considerable study, time, and effort to appreciate the works of a Newton or Einstein. But I suggest that the elegance of the works of all of these are of a similar magnitude.
  • ...is some attention to good spelling and grammar.
    I wince every time I see some idiot use the letter 'u' as a personal pronoun. When someone uses the wrong form of 'Their' (belonging to them), 'There' (over there) or 'They're' (they are) in a sentence, or worse.
    Basically, I work on this simple premise. If you are incapable of expressing your views clearly and in a literate manner, why the hell should I pay any attention to them? Write like a moron, and I'll think you're a moron.
    Somebody (I forget who) once said that with the increasing popularity of email we'd see a new literacy. Judging by the offences against language I see on the internet, I'd say they were wrong. We're seeing a new illiteracy, and it's abhorrent.

    Hacker: A criminal who breaks into computer systems
  • I beg to differ.

    Good code, like good archetecture, is definately art.

    Most art requires knowledge of the medium to appreciate it. Since the only people who spend a lot of time reading code are programmers, they are the only ones likely to see the artistic merits of well-crafted software.

  • Internet Killed The BBS Star (Score:4)

    by Golias ( 176380 ) on Thursday December 28, 2000 @08:53AM (#1416040)
    John, you seem to miss the point. It is not the rising tide of "corporatism' (whatever the hell that is) which washed away the BBS culture of the 80's. Quite to the contrary, we did it to ourselves.

    The reason why BBS junkies tended to bond as communities was because they were not "virtual" communities, they were actual communities. Before the Internet came along, free BBS's were, by necessity, local. Since you were dialing a local number to log in, and were not connected to a national network (for the most part), you could be sure that the people you were chatting with lived within about 20 miles or so. You all saw the same concert last Saturday, you are all dealing with the same weather, and you could trade Bob Dylan bootlegs by visiting each other at home. Gatherings could be frequent and informal.

    That's why there is really no such thing as a "virtual community", because a community, by definition, is people living together. Anything else is (at best) a weak similacrum of a community.

    Most of the BBS's either evolved into mom-and-pop ISP's, or moved to the web, or simply faded from existance... and most of us are fine with that. The old stereotype of lonely nerds gathering together via telecommunications is gone, not because it was wiped out, but because it is no longer needed. "Nerd" culture is mainstream culture these days: Larry Ellison and Bill Gates are exactly the sort of guys who regularilly had their heads shoved into toilets when they were kids, and now they take turns being the richest man in the world. Computer gaming has become a multi-billion-dollar industry. We exchange e-mail with our parents and grandparents. 65% of Americans are Star Trek fans.

    The BBS's died because nobody needs them anymore. We already have friends and communities, we don't feel the need for a "virtual" one.

    Oh yea... By the way, somebody should tell you this and it might as well be me: The WELL was never cool. Sorry to be the one to burst your bubble.

  • Other than the recipe for electric jello, there was a good point buried in there. The notion of virtual communities does still have a long way to go. I think when enough people get enough bandwidth, virtual communities might start to seem a lot more community-like.

    Someday in the future we may get to the point where when we think of the term "virtual community" (not that I ever actually use that term) we'll think of a site where we can video conference with hundreds of different people at a time instead of a modern message board or chat room.

    When we get to that point, it will be possible to to form something online you would really consider a community.

  • Adding video and sound will even more severely limit the membership of this so-called VC to those who can afford the bandwidth and hardware...mostly people well ensconced in the corporate world and lifestyle, or students on their way there.

    And does anyone really think being able to see what other people look like will INCREASE the size of the community, or will it make it even more self-selecting?

  • I ran a BBS for 4 years as a teenager, (from 1996) and had a few "User Parties" myself. For some reason, especially after the first one, things went way differently afterward. The human element of virtual communities makes it very strange after you have talked with people with who you know only by their personality and words. Someone being older, or younger, or skinnier or fatter than you had expected changes your views on them weather you like it or not, weather you think it's right or not. Personally, I like knowing your friends through Virtual communities *only* through them, it makes it more interesting that way. There's no other way to have a relationship with someone without the assumptions/judgements that a physical world forces upon you.

  • i'd like to thank the first 20 respondants (Score:3)

    by pezpunk ( 205653 ) on Thursday December 28, 2000 @08:28AM (#1416045) Homepage
    for not reading the article, for posting nothing that hasn't been said a thousand times before, and for being completely predictable and boring. I'm glad no brain power was actually wasted THINKING about anything he wrote, otherwise it might just require a response that contained something more than status-quo cynicism and lame "jon katz is gay" jokes. does ANYONE have anything interesting to say anymore?
  • When someone uses the wrong form of 'Their' (belonging to them), 'There' (over there) or 'They're' (they are) in a sentence, or worse.

    That's not really a complete sentence.

    Basically, I work on this simple premise.

    The premise follows that sentence, but there's no way for the reader to know that until they've read the next sentence. It's not clear what this is referring to when reading that sentence. Perhaps better would be to join that one to the one that follows with a colon.

    Besides, premise isn't really the right word to use there.

    But these are minor nitpicks. You've written a grammar-troll that commits no serious errors of its own. That's quite rare. Nicely done.

  • Long multipart over dramatized stories make me rething using this virtual community

  • Interesting timing. After working on an essay all morning which introduces the deep map concept, I click on slashdot and find that John Katz just posted an essay on a relevant topic. What is a deep map? It's a real-time virtual reality. A deep map can be deep enough to contain several virtual communities. The movie "The Matrix" gives a crisp example of a deep map (the matrix is a sinister deep map in that movie, but there can be benign ones, as well). The link to the deep map above is absolutely brand new, only a few moments old; at least one of its links points to a site which was just purchased from a registrar less than an hour ago, so it won't be online until tomorrow, but if anyone is interested in the concept, please check it out. There is a tremenduous amount of work to be done. Thanks.
  • Left the link out of the previous post. There is an introduction to the deep map [gawak.com] concept at www.gawak.com/deepmap. What is a deep map? It's a real-time virtual reality. Thanks.
  • What I really hate is people who use parentheses.
  • Hey, sounds like you're talking about the deep map! www.gawak.com/deepmap
  • We've all been trolls at one time or another. The technology to extend the medium to video and sound is not futuristic. It is upon us. Check out the deep map concept.

  • Perhaps the level of optimism one has for the medium of the Internet relates to just what one seeks in it. What do you want to experience when you log on? I want to expand my mind and converse with people that I would never come into contact with otherwise. From that standpoint, interacting on listserves and email has exponentially expanded my own mind and allowed me to meet leading thinkers all over the world.

    Theodore Zeldin, considered one of the 100 most influential thinkers of the Millenium, has recently published a fascinating and inspiring book about the art of conversation, entitled _Conversation: How Talk Can Change Our Lives_.

    In a recent radio discussion with Kojo Nnamdi, he spoke with great hope and enthusiasm for the expanding means by which humans can conduct conversation--telephone, email, letter, radio. In his view, it doesn't matter whether a conversation is carried out face-to-face or through the mediation of other tools, so long as the content is meaningful, thought-provoking, and establishes a level of learning.

  • ... into the next big thing.

    But what is the point of this story? It is rife with buzzwords, jargon, official-looking references, and the infamous underlying big-brother threat. All I came away with was VC's aren't perfect and disadvantaged ... plus some BBS nostalgia. Were BBS's not a VC?

    VC's are on par with 'over the fence' and 'watercooler meetings'. People communicate what the can and when they can. It is true that human contact cannot be replaced by VC's but there are people who prefer VC's because of the convenience, sterility, and the option of anonymity.

    Walking down the street to the community board meeting at the local rec center and then trying to avoid the village idiot ... compared to sitting down, logging in, then 'block user' ... makes me think that real-life communities are at the disadvantage.

  • Trolls dislike personal contact (Score:3)

    by Kiss the Blade ( 238661 ) on Thursday December 28, 2000 @08:08AM (#1416055) Journal
    IMO, the problem just now is that the Virtual Community is poised between familiarity and impersonality, because it is still mainly a textual medium. If at some stage we have the technology to extend the medium to video and sound, to offer a more immersive and personal experiance, the number of trolls and flamers will drop immeasurably. This is because people rarely troll or flame IRL, because that is too personal for them to handle. OTOH, they will not troll places where there is no personal investment by the participants either. It would seem that the current level of development of virtual communities is ideal for the troller.

    I think that in the future, when technology makes the VC a more personal experiance, the amount of trolling will drop precipitously. One can only hope, anyway.

    KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.

  • I made a direct point. He and his kind love to find victims, assign blame, and then propose that they are the only solution.

  • (Thank you Tank Girl...) Well, the "heighth of Nadsat fashion" online right now may not be text, but text isn't all that bad.

    After all, most books intended for adult readers (something a lot of our more illiterate /.er friends may not know about -- nudge nudge) -- including the excellent Social Life of Information (thank you JonKatz for having a modicum of taste) -- are still...

    ...wait for it...

    ...text-only interfaces...

    A Snickering Interrobang
  • Quite true. In this instance it's not the technology that's not working. A well developed web site can easily technically replace a BBS. The big difference is that BBSes were never open to the general public. You needed at least the unpublished phone number, and in many instances needed to know a member to join. So I don't think the technology is as much of the problem of bring back those BBS feelings (that is if enough people really want them back) compared to their implementation and membership. Since only the local community "smart kids" would be on any BBS, it naturally fostered a small, closer-knit community. In general, the internet doesn't, but I don't feel that's due at all to technology.

  • You're missing the point (Score:3)

    by truthsearch ( 249536 ) on Thursday December 28, 2000 @08:30AM (#1416059) Homepage Journal
    Bringing back the neighborhood BBS is not the goal. I remember being on BBSes in NYC every day after school. It was a simple online community. While those feelings may not exist with any web site, going technologically backwards is no solution. Every feature I have ever seen on any BBS already exists easily on the web. One key difference is that each BBS community was relatively small and local. It's like moving from the suburbs to mid-town Manhattan. Out in the burbs people meet on the street and say hello. In mid-town you don't meet anyone unless introduced by someone you know. A good virtual community needs small, friendly neighborhoods like BBSes once were, but not BBSes themselves.
  • You obviously have no taste for the written language. Should all posts be short, concise, redundant links to kernel 2.4 articles? Did you ever take any English classes while you were/are in school? Or did you spend 18 years crunching numbers and learning how to write pascal? The end users of the internet like you and I are the minority, there are far more contributing members of the online world than fuckwads like you who simply compile code on their linux box and whine on /. . Perhaps you should try, someday, to write an essay with a logical begining, middle and end and have the balls to post it on /. Or, just continue on in your life of banality and whine about those that do. Have fun in the sys admin closet keeping your mouth shut and making our computers work for us.
  • Sorry, I don't understand. I'm really only able to read sentences that use punctuation, syntax and grammar correctly...sorry.
  • I wish I could thank Katz for not writing this seriese of articles, but he went and did it anyway.

    However, we can thank him for for posting something he's said a thousand times before, and being completely predictable and boring. I am glad no brain power was actualy wasted THINKING about anything before he wrote YASCLODE (Yet Another Self Congratulatory Load Of Drivel Essay).

    On the bright side (always an optimist!), we can celebrate that this is the last part in the series.

    --

  • So what if you want your little cosy place back where you can hang out with a few of your virtual friends. First of all, the fact that the Internet exists does not mean you can't start up a BBS anymore, now does it. Second, if you somehow wish do to it on the WWW anyway, just build a site with an URL that's too weird to be true, don't include any metatags and don't have anyone linking to you (Google might find you, the horror). Next just e-mail the adress to your friends so they can blindly copy-paste it into their favorites folder and there you go. Of course you could also build something that requires a login and kill off any account that misbehaves...
  • While those feelings may not exist with any web site, going technologically backwards is no solution.

    But staying with a technology that works instead of switching to one that doesn't(in some people's opinion) somehow makes a lot more sense, or is it just me?
  • Blindly assuming you are Kiss-The-Blade, which you are most likely not, considering you're anonymous, let's have some:

    The typical slashdotter is a conflicting hive of schizophrenic emotions, and would be at home in a Munch painting, I feel.

    Well, thank you very much.

    I consider myself to be of an artistic bent, and I have long been interested in the polar opposite of my mindset - the mindset of the 'geek'.

    Please redefine your/his/her/whoever's definition of art. Good code should be considered as art, it's just that most people do not have the system requirements to appreciate it. Where on earth does the idea come from that Geeks(tm) and Artists(tm) are each other's opposites? They actually have quite a lot in common, as they both refuse to walk on the middle of the road.
  • The geek produces beauty as a byproduct, much like a mathematician who is above all concerned with finding a proof, and is not concerned whether that proof is elegant or not, though it often will be.

    I beg to differ. You seem to assume that being a geek excludes being an artist. Using computers on a (semi)professional basis does not indicate inability to appreciate, and in some case, create art.

  • Re:Trolls dislike personal contact (Score:3)

    by Jedi Alec ( 258881 ) on Thursday December 28, 2000 @08:17AM (#1416067)
    OK, now be very, very honest with me. Would /. be the same without the goatsex, Beowulf cluster and Natalie Portman references? I almost consider it a sport avoiding the links [goatse.cx] we all know so well. The trolls might make a lot of noise, but it'd be damn silent without them every now and then...
  • There are two areas where virtual communities make a lot of sense. One is for discussing specialized issues for which there aren't many experts I.E. Martial arts discussion by various Sensei, scientists discussing (when not under NDA) things that most people within walking distance of them wouldn't understand, etc. The other use is for people who live in the boonies and can't always socialize.

  • a good writer concentrates on letting the thoughts fly.

    What an awful way of looking at the craft of writing.

    A good writer has to work at it, and only slowly becomes better. Thoughts have to be captured, sure, but then they have to be honed into shape.
  • Well, you're comment has led me for one to cyberspace.org. I checked it out, and I will return there. You know, the most wonderful things have come out of people's basements and garages! Thanks again for the tip......
  • When I began my adventure in computing in a serious way a year ago, I was well aware of the vast quantity and scope of information available on the net. At first I was like the "kid in the candy store - all alone" situation. I couldn't get enough of it. As my hardware and internet access became increasingly sophisticated, I began to feel 'alone in a crowd'. I have dabbled in ICQ and other messenging services. Email seems to be the best option for now. I find I do want a very personal experience in the 'virtual community'. This community exists regardless of its changing quality. I see the virtual community in the same way as the one I live in physically. There is no practical difference except the assumed anonimity one could imagine when online. After all, "nobody can SEE me". Yet our words and what those words create with others online are what is "seen" - that's who we become. Imagine not having sight. You live with a lot of other blind people. Think about what communication and interaction might be like. In a sense, we are all 'blind' when online. We can't 'see' each other in a chat room. In this forum we are all visitors, contributors or those who maintain the site. We generate an online personality, and others relate to us accordingly. More to my point, I see the way to a meaningful virtual community is to BE the highest vision we have of what this should be, and practice it. As in the physical community, those who "misbehave" can be dealt with in order to keep them enfolded in the virtual community so all that wonderful creative energy misdirected for a time can mature with the rest of us, because we encourage it by our examples. I do think we should humanise/personalise our interactions in the virtual community. I am encouraged greatly by the mere fact that this topic has appeared to be discussed. I think this is enough from me, for now.
  • Actually I think you've failed to realize a serious consequence of adding video and sound to a virtual community. By adding video/sound to a virtual community, you have essentially created a virtual forum (meeting place). The problem with this (as with most technological advances) is that it makes us lazier. Think about it, with the ability to work, communicate, and shop online, what's the point in going outside? We'd all become fat and lazy and so technology-dependent that in the event that power goes out we all be SOL.

    Just my 2 bits.


    Project: To Take Over The World
  • I think virtual environment is one of the key aspects for future communities. Combining mobile communications and virtual community has under the last year been very much under discussion here in Finland, check out e.g. http://kolumbus.fi/yhteiso/ (unfortenaly only in Finnish) or http://www.matchem.com.

    Hotelli Kultakala is a 3D real-time community with users being able to chat and move from location to another in a virtual hotel. Users can customise their own rooms by purchasing furnitures with their mobile phones. For the first three months they have been presumed to have a turnover of ~ 50 000 Euros - not much yet, but showing some of the power of this kind of environments. Check it out!

    Matchem-site is in English, so it is pretty self-explanatory. Check it out anyway!

    I have a strong belief that mobile is one of key factors for upcoming communities - users of mobile devices are reachable wherever they are - think about the high usage rates of SMSs in Europe - shouldnt' this already show the power of mobile com's in people's behaviour? What do you think?

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