Virtual Communitites

The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier written by Howard Rheingold is an article focused on the online website known as WELL (Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link) that has been active since 1985 (Rheingold 95). Rheingold talks about how he has spent an enormous amount of time on the website and then goes into great detail the findings and his opinions on it.
The WELL is a teleconferencing system that is used to unite the world which was started by Stuart Howard. One of its main purposes is that it builds a sense of community for it’s users. It’s a website where its users must pay to chat or get information but again it builds relationships with the users. It’s also known for being a professional community so that it’s users know that it’s credible and reliable. Rheingold noted that through all the time that he spent on the WELL website he started to, “care about these people I met through the computer, and I care deeply about the future of the medium that enables us to assemble” (Rheingold, 95). The WELL website can be easily compared to the social networking website that many people are familiar with, Facebook. Rheingold, along with many facebook users, get to know people online and then form relationships with these people. The medium of to what level the friendship forms into is endless. Like talked about in class, our teacher uses online sources to build friendships with people she does not know yet knows that they will be there to listen and give advice when needed. Though some may say this is creepy, or unusual, it is a sense of Media Literacy whereas you know what you’re getting yourself into and are able to set your own boundaries on how you choose to start and keep friendships.
In his Virtual Community piece Rheingold talks about Computer Mediate Communication (CMC) which again is what I was talking about, communication through the computer. Rheingold defines it as, “Computers and the switched telecommunication networks that also carry on telephone calls constitute the technical foundation of computer-mediated communications (CMC)” (Rheingold, 97). The CMC is the network that allows communication that links people throughout the world, this then forms virtual communities among people. New Medias, such as the CMC, allows people to do things with one another in new ways. “Democracy, education, science, and intellectual life” are all ideas that are represented on the Net and then discussed by people throughout the world (Rheingold 98). Rheingold even quotes that he thinks the CMC may be the next great escape in the medium where traditional Saturday morning cartoons, soap operas, and even the radio will used on the Net and people will turn to it to view and listen. The CMC is changing how people are using traditional technologies, and in time will only continue to expand our media uses.
I agree with many of the points and examples that Rheingold presents in this virtual community article because I too use many of the tools presented on the internet. As I stated before, facebook is a media that many people use in different ways. Rheingold would argue that the timing that people are presented with these new medias has a lot to do with how they choose to use them. Like we talked about in class, as a senior I was presented with facebook when I was already a student therefore the way I use it is considerably different from those students who have been using it since high school. Rheingold used the example that people who have grown up in the cellular phone and television era are more likely to migrate and use new technologies forms on the internet. I agree with this because as I have grown up in the time period where having a cell phone is a necessity I can only imagine as time goes by what other things that are currently unavailable to me I will become accustomed to.