From: kwun@css.itd.umich.edu (Michael Kwun)
Newsgroups: alt.co-ops,alt.sustainable.agriculture
Subject: Re: Virtual Communities/Intentional Communities
Date: 9 Nov 1992 19:32:07 GMT
Organization: University of Michigan ITD Consulting and Support Services
NNTP-Posting-Host: stimpy.css.itd.umich.edu

In article <momotaro.721255820@cwis> momotaro@cwis.unomaha.edu (Bryan Stack) writes (some deleted):
>colinj@monet.ccs.itd.umich.edu (Colin Eric Johnson) writes:
>
>>	With the discussion as it is on Communities I am wondering
>>what people think about virtual communities. A friend has created a
[rest of Colin's stuff deleted by me]
>
>The following comments have a rather testy tone.  Rather than rewrite 
>the whole thing to soften it up, I will let you proceed with that warning.  
>I stand by the essential meaning of what I said.
>
>Try living in a real community of 1000 people.  You can't lurk in the
>shadows and watch without participating.  You can't delete a
>troublemaker or establish a kill-file to avoid dealing with one.  (I
>know, we have jails, but it is not a simple matter to use them.)  If
>you are different from the community norm, you won't just be flamed or
>deleted or kill-filed, you will be ostracised or beaten up.  You can't
>just come and go as you please -- you have to get along or get out, and
>sometimes getting out is not really possible.  In short, there is NO
>SUCH THING as a virtual community.  It is a romantic fiction of modern

nope.  what you're saying is that a virtual community is different than a 
"regular" community.  To deny the existence of a virtual community is either
a semantic exercise in stupidity (on both our parts) or a claim that the
virtual community Colin describes is missing something fundamental to the
concept of "community".  If we're just arguing semantics, I really don't
see the point... and by the way, my dad is bigger than your dad (ok, maybe
not, but that's about as useful an argument).  If you're claiming Colin's
concept of a virtual community is missing something vital to the notion of
community, then you've lost me:  all you've done is shown that a virtual
community fails to have certain properties that exist in "normal" communities.
So what?  I fail to see how anything you mentioned keeps a virtual community
from being a community.

>techno-driven people who live in cities which have little or no real
>community to begin with; the model is faulty, so the product is doomed
>to be flawed.
>
>I disclaim nothing.  If the State of Nebraska or any of its agencies
>happen to agree or disagree with me, that's their business.
>

Maybe the product is flawed, maybe it isn't, but that doesn't mean it isn't
a community.  Then again, I'm not sure why all the things you mentioned are
flaws; things like not getting beaten up for being different sound pretty
good to me.
   Also, "testy" caveat or not, I'm not sure why you think you have the right
to judge all who claim that they are a part of a virtual community--"techno-
driven people who live in cities which have little or no real community to
begin with."  Have you tried living in my community?  I live in a smallish
city (100,000 + U of M students), as does Colin, and I'd say I'm part of a
virtual community as well as part of the community of Ann Arbor.

The virtual community has a lot to offer us; we are not judged my our looks
or our age--depending on your computer name, maybe not even your gender.  We
can keep in touch with friends around the world, and at most universities,
this is even free.  Certainly there are flaws, but it's hardly like "normal"
communities aren't flawed...

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