Community: what's this?

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Community what's this?

• IMKE CSC 2006
• Kaido Kikkas

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Community?

• as defined by a community (Wikipedia -
  http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community) a
  collection of living things sharing a common
  environment. Not necessarily humans!
• Environment
• physical
• virtual (more and more common)

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...

• Examples of (human) communities
• a number of people living at the same place
  (sharing the physical environment)
• a number of people doing the same thing (may be
  physical or virtual)
• a number of people having a common feature (may
  be physical or virtual)

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Etymology

• One explanation
• Latin com/cum 'with', -munis- 'linked
  exchange' - -tatus 'small, local'
• Another
• Latin - com/cum 'with', munus 'gift, present'
  a group (e.g. friends) exchanging gifts!
• For comparison German terms
• Gemeinschaft 'community' vs Gesellschaft
  'society'(as outlined by Ferdinand Tönnies
  1887). Communities as building blocks of society

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Communities throughout the ages

• the Flintstones pursuing a dinosaur
• the Roman Forum
• Middle Ages a village, a guild
• Modern Age a firm, a trade union
• the postmodernism the cult of the Individual
• the information age return of the communities
  (best seen in but not limited to IT sector)

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Three authors to read

• Robert Theobald
• social entrepreneurship
• post-scarcity economy
• mindquake
• Charles Handy
• return of the guilds
• Pekka Himanen
• hacker ethic
• the 'Linus' Law' of motivation

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Weakening of traditional communities

• losing the roots
• the mishmash of worldviews
• a man is the ... of the fellow man
• the triumph of individualism
• consumer mentality

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... and the birth of new ones

• new technologies
• lots of choice
• timeless time
• increasingly unmet need for communication
• educational aspirations, lifelong learning
• lots of free time
• needs for 'something real'
• sometimes also direct altruism

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Various factors

• Various factors
• size
• lifespan
• coverage (local, international, global)
• mono- or multicultural
• official or unofficial
• cooperation vs competition
• physical, virtual or both

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Different things

• adolescents showing off at rate.ee
• hardcore hackers working on Linux kernel
• travellers sharing their memories at Flickr.com
• teachers and lecturers using IVA at TLU
• Dwarves, Elves and Orcs in various RPGs
• ....

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Yet common grounds

• belonging
• certain models of communication
• network of relation (not hierarchy)
• support mechanisms

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Concluding words

• the role of community (in its various forms) is
  increasing
• technical progress needs a 'social counterweight'
• many things are the new old ones