Cyber Community

1
Cyber Community

• Community is One of Those Terms That Six People
  in the Same Conversation Might Use Differently
  Without Knowing
• What is "real community" - must it be connected
  to a place or a neighborhood?
• Can there be an "architectural community,"
  medical community," Hispanic community," gay
  community," etc.
• Can there be a DOWNTOWN "community" if not
  place-based and is a suburban housing development
  really a community, even if it is place-based?

2
Pre-cyberspace Dictionary Community and
Neighborhood

• Community - an interacting population of various
  kinds of individuals in a common location
• Community - people with common interests living
  in a particular area
• Community - a group of people with a common
  characteristic and interest living together
  within a larger society
• Community - a body of persons of common and
  especially professional interests scattered
  through a larger society (the academic community)
• Neighborhood a section lived in by neighbors
  and usually having distinguishing characteristics
  (neighbor dweller)

3
Is a Network" Essentially a Community"

• Can a Network (I.e. a computer network of
  similarly motivated participants) Cause Some to
  Turn Their Back on the Place in Which They
  Physically Live?
• What does community mean in an increasingly
  fragmented society and an increasingly culturally
  diverse society
• What does it mean to our notions and effects to
  preserve and nurture "downtown" communities
  (urban communities, in general?)

4
The There There or Not There

• Is There a There in Cyberspace?
• Most of us grew up in actual places (not
  cyberspaces) in entirely non-intentional
  communities
• At dawn of 20th c. 40 of American workforce
  lived off the land - now fewer than 1 extract a
  living from the soil
• Most of us now live in split-level "ranch houses"
  in more or less identical suburban "communities"
  in a country you might call "Generica"

5
John Perry Barlow

• John Perry Barlow (writer, Bd. Of Directors of
  WELL - Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link - , tunesmith
  for the Grateful Dead, and cattle rancher)
  combination of television and suburban population
  patterns is simply toxic to the soul - satellite
  disks bring the cultural infection of television

John Perry Barlow
6
Mysterious Nomadic City of the Deadheads

• A Virtually Physical Ttown that Follows the
  Grateful Dead Around the Country
• Many of the necessary elements of community A
  culture, a religion of sorts (no dogma, but
  nurturing aspect of spiritual practice), sense of
  necessity, and most importantly, shared adversity

7
Barlow and the Deadheads

• Barlow searched for a way to move among the
  Deadheads
• The WELL (Whole Earth 'lectronic link) in
  Sausalito California - a "place" where Deadheads
  gather
• Thousands of them "there" - gossiping,
  complaining, comforting, harassing, bartering,
  beginning and ending love affairs, praying for
  one another's sick kids, engaging in religion
• Everything one might find in a small town, except
  drag racing on Main Street or making out on back
  roads

8
A New Locale of Human Community?

• All conducted by minds from whom the bodies have
  been amputated - all people were deaf, dumb, and
  blind - "town" had neither seasons nor sunsets
  nor smells
• Surely these deficiencies would be remedied by
  richer, faster communications media
• Featureless log-in handles would gradually
  acquire video faces (and thus expressions)
• Shaded 3-D body puppets (and thus body language)

9
William Gibson and Cyberspace

• This "space" recognized at once to be a
  primitive form of the cyberspace William Gibson
  predicted in his sci-fi novel Neuromancer - all
  without apparent dimensions or vistas

10
Barlow's Enthusiasm for Virtuality Has Cooled -
Enter Lanier

• Barlow Thought He Would Experience Virtual
  Community" - What Was Missing?
• Missing was "prana" - Hindu term for breath and
  spirit
• Central question in the virtual age, can prana
  somehow be made to fit through any disembodied
  medium?
• Prana is literally, the vital element in the
  holy and unseen ecology of relationship - the
  dense mesh of invisible life - on whose surface
  carbon-based life floats like a thin film
• It is the heart of the fundamental and profound
  difference between information and experience
• Jaron Lanier has said that "information is
  alienated experience," and, that being true,
  prana is part of what is removed when you create
  such easily transmissible replicas of experience
  as, say, the evening news

11
Jason Lanier

• Jaron Lanier has said that "information is
  alienated experience," and, that being true,
  prana is part of what is removed when you create
  such easily transmissible replicas of experience
  as, say, the evening news
• Again, It is the heart of the fundamental and
  profound difference between information and
  experience

Jaron Lanier is a computer scientist, composer,
visual artist, and author. Lanier is probably
best known for his work in Virtual Reality. He
coined the term Virtual Reality and in the
early 1980s. He lead the team that developed the
first widely used software platform architecture
for immersive virtual reality applications.  Sun
Microsystems acquired his code and seminal
portfolio of patents related to Virtual Reality
and networked 3D graphics in 1999.