I’m all for nostalgia. I’m all for the good ol’ days and sitting around the kitchen table on a Sunday night for family dinner and 8 hours worth of dishes afterward. I love when my whole town comes together on Canada Day at Kinsmen Park to celebrate together. I love the feeling of belonging.
With that being said, we are currently situated in the age of Web 2.0, social networking, blogs, wikis, forums, groups and a million other ways to connect. Have a strange obsession? No longer fear being the town outcast or hiding from the neighbours, embrace your obsession with hundreds of others on Facebook! Though Barney makes his standpoint regarding the ability of the Internet’s potential to foster a sense of belonging in a way comparable to a physical space or place. For Barney, society today has lost sight of time-biased media and we are now living in a world of space-bias and intangibility. This tangibility, he argues, is imperative to a real community of belonging as if the table and chairs validate the community as “real” in some way.
I think sitting at a computer desk, with a computer chair, and allowing your relationships to be mediated by a screen seems rather tangible. You cannot physically touch the inside of a computer (the network) but you also cannot touch the inside of the wood in a table. What is the difference?
There IS an opportunity for the Internet to act as a sense of belonging or community. Take, for example, “Sentimental Refugee” which was created by a US immigrant to act as a resource for other immigrants for “connecting, sharing, discussing experiences and getting advice and, whenever possible, help with the life of an immigrant.
The site is not limited to members residing in the US alone, but accepts members from across the globe and its content is driven by readers. In a case like this, that allows marginalized and diasporic groups the ability to feel as if they are a true part of something catering just to them…how can we possibly not see this as a means of community. Where in the tangible world can millions of immigrants share their story and get advice nearly instantaneously? The site also boasts a personals section allowing these people not only the ability to belong to a community, but to foster and share relationships with others within that community. How can we see this type of community does not wholly encompass, create feelings of home, and foster relationships in the same way a community baseball game does?
Online communities bring about collaboration, in some cases love, sharing, communication, knowledge formation and building, a global reach, increased connectivity, support, a different learning experience, flexibility in time engaging with the community and most importantly…knowledge. Why then, should we fear the vanishing table?
Image: http://browse.deviantart.com/digitalart/photomanip/?qh=§ion=&q=network#/d37vlle
Amen! I understand there is a debate about whether online communities can actually constitute a community, but with the characteristics you have presented, I do agree online communities can foster connections - the debate can simply be about what kind of connection is fostered. I'm a firm believer that what you get out of something equates to the amount of effort you put in. Therefore, if someone really wants to create a community, I have no doubt they can do that if they are willing to put in the effort and find others who are willing to do the same.
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