Week 5 Summary
This week I have been contemplating the most appropriate virtual community in which to base my study. In the interview with Howard Rheingold he makes reference to the ‘Global Community’. Whilst he in clear in stating the global community is not some fluffy, ideological community where everyone is best friends he does raise some interesting points. Namely, a large portion of the world now live in cities and now experience less of the close knit community born in villages where people are concerned about life on a very local scale. This has occurred concurrently with geographical boundaries posing less restriction as travel is readily accessible and geographical boundaries have been dissolved by the risk of global flu pandemics and nuclear war, for example. Reduced community identity on a small geographical scale, development of infrastructure/the WWW and geographical distance becoming inconsequential and the sharing of common concern/interest/belief have paved a way for virtual communities to develop. This shift in community dynamics poses numerous questions as to how people converse and a basis for my ethnography.
I received feedback on my lifestream. As anticipated, it was apparent that my use lifestream is not being used to its full. In an attempt to update my lifestream I found that I had notes scattered across my desk and throughout my hard drive that would suggest I had done some work yet to look at my lifestream one could not tell as much. My course participation is an array of scribbles and links that require structuring to form weekly summaries. Due to (the overused excuse of) work commitments I have found it difficult to participate in the discussions held in Holyrood hub. However, time spent commuting enables me to complete the readings and I have managed to feed a couple of twitter comments into my lifestream. I wonder at times whether it will take the ten weeks of this course to master making regular and varied contributions to my lifestream…slowly I am getting there.