Is The Virtual Community A Myth?

Berkeley scholar Joseph Lockard (a doctoral candidate in English Literature) claims the idea of the virtual community is a Ponzi scheme, promoted by benighted utopians and elitists who equate access to the Net and the Web with social and democratic enlightenment. This myth has been virtually unchallenged for years, he says, and in a provocative and interesting essay called Progressive Politics, Electronic Individualism, and the Myth of Virtual Community, Lockard claims that it's nothing more than a bunch of hooey. Does anybody out there think virtual communities are real?

In a piercing but cynical assessment of online community, Lockard points (the essay is in the book "Internet Culture") out that cyberspace is by definition expensive real estate. Access requires significant disposable income to cover computer capitalization, the continuing outlays of phone bills, repair and continuing recapitalization. For some, employers pick up the tab. For others, like university students, access is a privilege or perk that comes with tuition.

Nevertheless, utopians mooned over the Net's birth, and the idea of virtual community was one of their earliest delights.

Cyberspace, Lockard writes, arrived "virtually unchallenged as a democratic myth, a fresh field for participatory citizenship." Comparisons to "Jeffersonian democracy" (which I've made more than once) and other universal democratic ideals bespeak a historical naivete and ignorance, he charges, leaving unspoken the hard fact that access capital is "the poll tax for would-be virtual citizens."

Lockard ridicules the "trickle-down technology" theorem which holds that digital machinery will eventually become cheap enough for everybody, just like phones, electricity and cars. That, he says, is pie-in-the-sky rhetoric that completely ignores the gateway stratification and mal-distribution of access incorporated into Net access and modern computing. The individualism and fragmented interests that mark the Net and the Web actually work as an impediment to social cooperation in cyberspace, marking the dominance of class privilege over a truly inclusive community.

Lockard's essay scores more than once. He's right in going after the hype that has surrounded the idea of the virtual community for years now. The tech world is rich and elitist, and becomes more so daily. Apart from developments like open source, which has done much to try and make technology more inclusive (though very few people will ever be able to successfully program) there are few signs yet that the Net is re-vitalizing democracy, or that virtual communities are supplanting or improving upon real ones. online, we see little organized concern for the technologically-deprived, or worry about the inevitable social divisions created by classes of empowered and tech-deprived people. It's already obvious that people with access to computing and the Net will have enormous educational, social and business advantages over those who don't; the latter face menial, low-paying jobs all over the planet.

Lockard also accurately points out that the largest communities forming online are corporate, not individualistic, and their agenda is marketing, not community. He calls the very idea of a "virtual community" an oxymoron.

"Instead of real communities, cyber-communities sit in front of the [late but not lamented] Apple World opening screen that pictures a cluster of cartoon buildings which represent community functions (click on post office for e-mail, a store for online shopping, a pillared library for electronic encyclopedias, etc.)" Such software addresses only a desire for community, Lockard writes, not the real thing.

Materiality is the definition of real communities, and virtual communities can't replicate real ones. He writes, in fact, "... [I]t is precisely this human need for community that is being projected onto cyberspace and exploited, sometimes even with the best of intentions." This comparison is a bit of a stretch, something like comparing Disney World to one's hometown. Apple World never evoked a virtual community, it was just trying to steal some of AOL's business.

But for all the value of this kind of anti-hype perspective, it's too soon to dismiss the idea of the virtual community. Jeffersonian ideals were created by an elite, remember, one of whose leading members was Jefferson himself. The very idea of individual liberty was, at the time, an elitist notion conferred on certain white male property owners (remember, the poll tax and other impediments limited the scope of the trumpeted equality) but not extended to other Americans for nearly two centuries.

Potentially, computing could be used to make voting easier, more honest and even, if information becme more widely available to more citizens, more rational. Online campaigns could, theoretically, be far less expensive, alienating and Washington-centered, as Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura proved a few years ago.

Lockard's argument also suffers from a narrow definition of community. Certainly there are bulletin boards and mailing lists -- from sex sites to San Francisco's WELL, from media-centric gatherings from pet rescue forums to AOL's Senior Net -- that have functioned for some time as very real communities that foster conversation and mutual understanding, spawn friendships, generate support for members in trouble. Topical, community oriented Websites -- everything from Camworld.com, Kuro5shin and myvideogames.com to Slashdot -- function as information or true cultural communities as well -- sometimes for idea-sharing, sometimes for material support and information.

The early cyber-gurus definitely got carried away by notions that everything would become virtual, a mistake now shared by all sorts of panicked businesses -- publishing comes to mind -- and starry-eyed utopians. Cyberspace is definitely a new kind of space, but there's as yet no reason to believe that it won't compliment or co-exist with the material kind. So far at least, virtual communities suggest a Middle Kingdom, existing somewhere in the middle between the utopian fantasies and Lockard's dismissive jeers.

Online people do make powerful connections and the virtual realm does permit us to share information (including software), research and commerce and and encounter all sorts of people in all kinds of places -- something that has never been possible before. But when the dust settles, and if the history of technology offers any clues, people will always hang out with their friends, get drunk. They'll still be logging off their computers to have sex, get married, fight with their parents, send their kids off to school and go to the movies, and seek out the company of human beings to meet human needs. The best virtual communities have always complimented that need, not supplanted it.

Comments

Re:He's an idiot.

[Danse]

They have an abundance of time, not of money.

Not bloody likely. If they're poor and not working, then yeah... they may have time. But they probably won't have any inclination to learn anything. If they're of the working poor class, then they probably have the inclination to learn, but they don't have the time or money since all their time is wrapped up in trying to make enough money to stay afloat. My family was somewhat like this.. except we were more of a lower-middle class, paycheck-to-paycheck living family. Still are really. It's very hard to get out of it once you're there. Any unforseen problem can start you on a downward spiral too, which makes you spend your time trying to get back to where you were before. Families that are worse off than mine was certainly aren't likely to have the time to devote to learning computers when they are spending their time trying to put food on the table and keep a roof over their heads. I got lucky when the company my mom worked for threw out some old computers and we got one of them (286/12mhz(IIRC), 1 meg of ram, CGA monitor, 10MB HD). It was the summer before my senior year in HS. If it weren't for that, I might not be typing this right now.

Elitism?

[SoupIsGood Food]

I flunked out of art school. Twice. Having no skills and no ability to hold down "normal" jobs, I used to live off $400 a month in the early nineties. That's $4800 a year, so far below the poverty line, I couldn't even see daylight from where I was.

$150 of that went to pay my share of the rent and utilities every month. $20 of what was left went for a dial-up shell account at a local ISP. I used a 5 year old Macintosh (with a black and white screen!) to get email, read news, chat on IRC and log onto the local BBSs. Two years later, and I had saved up enough ($500) to buy another five year old Mac, this one with a color graphics card and a monitor, and whoah! Web browsing!

In this day and age, all the computer equipment you need to get you online can be had for less than $100 if you shop carefully. Operating systems (Linux, *BSD, BeOS, QNX, Mac System 7) can be had for free. Net access is $15/month, or free if you can put up with the advertising.

So, tell me again how online access is open only to the "monied elite".

I'm now a Unix sys-admin and collumnist for online Macintosh trade journals. I make more money than my parents do. I would never, ever, ever have had the opportunity to make something of myself without net access, and without the support and advice of people I know only through the internet.

The "cyber community" is NOT the private reserve of the priveledged, and has done more to level class structure in the United states than anything short of the civli rights movement and the Emancipation Proclimation.

Think on that.

SoupIsGood Food

Re:Elitism?

[SoupIsGood Food]

"Intangible advantages" are intangible, and therefore immaterial and probably imginary.

All of my extended family are swamp yankees (New England version of "White Trash"). My parents both worked (mom was a nurse, Dad worked for the Navy), so I grew up middle class in a Navy town.

The people who I first met online (local BBSes in Florida and RI) were =all= from lower or working class families, and got fired from one crap job to the next. The rich folks with computers all paid for a local BBS or AOL, and usually just to leech warez. The people actually forming the communities on the message boards were universally poor (with one exception I know of), and usually came from poor or middle class backgrounds. Some of them were even smart. (Not all of them, tho.)

There =are= intangible advantages to being smart and a geek. The problem is, It's very hard to grow up geek in Latino or African American cultures...there is less tolerance for intellectual eccentricity than in other social groups. Instead of changing this mindset, fingers usually point to those evil Whites/Asians/Arabs and their cultural elitism as the reason for the tech imbalance.

But if you manage it, you get the same rewards from the cyber community white, rich people who grow up geek do.

My ex-boss grew up in the most squalid NYC barrio you can imagine. He's now a veep at a major financial firm with a corner office overlooking the Statue of Liberty. My coworker was black, never went to college, but made more money than I did because he could walk the walk.

He was arrested on a minor rap no white kid would have been busted on, and promptly fired by the suits in the corporate office. This is why we need cyber communities. The real world ones break the soul and spirit for utterly bullshit reasons.

(Happy end note: he beat the rap and found a new, better paying job with a contact he got from a...wait for it...friend online.)

SoupIsGood Food

My own take...

[isaac]

Virtual communities are real in an intellectual sense. I certainly know several people online I would consider friends, though I've never met most of them in person. We are a community, in that sense.

But I see where the author is coming from - this virtual community of friends can't affect in any meaningful way my physical environs. They're not part of my meatspace community, and to some extent, they sap my intellectual energies away from the people and institutions of proximate geography I might otherwise be more involved with, but for the internet.

Therein lies the danger - when people abandon their physical community for a virtual one, they leave their meatspace quality of life in the hands of other interested parties. This is how crack houses happen, how fundamentalists get elected to school boards, how zoning laws institutionalize race and class distinctions - smart people who could make a difference just don't pay attention. A virtual community is fundamentally no replacement for a real one.

Don't get me wrong, I don't lay the blame at the foot of the internet exclusively, so much as I do at our society's increasing tendency towards isolation. I do think internet use can be empowering, especially when used for grass-roots media (I love what the folks at indymedia.org are doing, even if I'm not thrilled with their hysterical tone at times - but then "they" are a loose collection of volunteers, mostly, and they still manage better coverage of many issues than professionals). I don't buy the hype of its grand transformative powers, though - the same things were said about television. ("But it's a one-way medium! The internet is different," I hear you say. Tell me about it in 10 years when you can't find an ISP to host your controversial web page about [whatever] because of liability concerns. So you can host pictures of your cat. Real empowering.) The internet, like the real world, is what we make of it - no more, no less. If we try and substitute virtual interactions for knowing your neighbors and local politicians, though, we're going to wake up with a headache one day.

-Isaac

That depends on what you mean by "community"...

[Angst Badger]

The net certainly provides communities as "real" as those existing in the real world. Of course, in the real world, people can live densely packed in aparment complexes and tract housing and not know the names of their nearest neighbors.

There are technological boundaries to be sure -- despite the great strides we've taken, the web is by its connectionless nature an awful way to build responsive, interactive tools -- but communities as such have largely ceased to exist in the wealthy, technologically-advanced, highly-mobile cities of the western world.

The question I don't think anyone is asking is whether the majority of people even want a community. Atavistic throwbacks like Jon Katz (and myself, for that matter) dig the idea of place and history and community, but I don't think most people do, or they wouldn't live the way they do. Those who do want community have their work cut out for them resisting the centrifugal forces of the modern world. Whether it's possible on the net misses the bigger issue of whether it's possible in the world anymore.

--

Re:That depends on what you mean by "community"...

[goliard]

The question I don't think anyone is asking is whether the majority of people even want a community.

That's an excellent question. I think the answer eventually boils down to "Yes, but", though one learns a lot by asking it.

Communities have costs as well as benefits. Whether any given individual desires to be in any given community depends entirely on the cost/benefit calculation that person makes.

I think that just about everyone has a strong appetite for community, but our "state of the art", if you will, in communities is so poor, that they deliver on their benefits only feebly, while their costs are high.

For instance, western culture is terrible at the issue of diversity (not just racial or religious, but any difference). This means community demands of conformity are often total, in absense of other forces. Most people are wise enough not to put all their emotional eggs into a basket so easily tipped over: if the slightest failure to conform means you lose your effort investment in that community, why take the risk?

In short, the reason that community has suffered in western culture is that it has not kept pace with the changes in culture. Our cultural implementation of community is archaic and does not fit modern values or situations.

What the hell is community?

[RebornData]

The problem with the discussion about this article is that there's no shared definition of what "community" means among the posters. I participate in several things that could be broadly described as "virtual communities", but are very, very different beasts.

/. is a community in that it's a place where a specific group of people with a common identity (broadly, geekdom) post information of common interest to other people like them, and "discuss" that information. I put "discuss" in "quotes" because there's no extended dialog- one post per user is the norm, maybe with a followup for clarification. What's missing the the element of personal relationships- most "communities" are really best defined as a conglomeration of personal relationships between the participants, which is almost nonexistant on /. and nearly impossible in a group of this size. But it still clearly has elements of community.

I am on several mailing lists that consist primarily of former friend and peer groups from "real life". I graduated from college six years ago, and despite the fact that we are spread across the country and world, the group of close friends I had there interacts on a daily basis using one. We support each other in times of trouble, carry on deep conversations as if we were all hanging out in some bar, and generally keep up with what's important in our lives. This very much is a real-life community of personal relationships that has been strengthened by Internet technology.

These are just two examples. They are both radically different from each other, but fall under the broad definition of "community". I bet that the author of this book has a very specific definition of what he means by "community", and I'm guessing that it's something entirely different than the two communities I've described above. Unfortunately, what this definition is was not communicated clearly in Katz's review. I guess the lesson is not to get your panties in a wad over someone else's interpretation of a work on a complex topic like this... read it for yourself before spouting off.

Of course, this wouldn't be true to the /. community norms...

More community and less virtual

[Zulfiya]

Lockard also accurately points out that the largest communities forming online are corporate, not individualistic, and their agenda is marketing, not community. He calls the very idea of a "virtual community" an oxymoron.

Yeah, and the largest phone systems belong to corporations, too. That doesn't invalidate the telephone as a mode of community interaction.

I think what they essayist missed here is that "virtual" and "community" are both stand-alone concepts. A community is a group of people who are interrelated, one way or another. "Virtual" (in the sense it is being used here) is the way people communicate. The "virtual community" isn't going to "replace" regular community any more than literate communities (remember, near universal literacy is a modern phenom) replaced spoken communities.

Computer literacy makes a similar gap in society now as traditional literacy has made in the past. And, consider, even now, the literacy gap between economic classes. If that gap hasn't gone away, do you expect the computer litaracy gap to vanish so easily?

Re:He's an idiot.

[ackthpt]

So you're saying that the ignorant clerk at the deli counter, who doesn't even know that "1/4" isn't the same as "0.4" can:
1) Learn how to install, config and navigate Linux
2) Figure out how to set up ppp or whatever to connect to a free ISP
3) Know a 486 from Ru486
4) Accurately differentitiate "1/4" pound of PCs from "0.4" pounds of dirt

It's not really fair to use the economic yardstick, since even the dumbest can find a job and make enough to buy a bargain PC at Best Buy, with one of those Compuserve or MSN rebates, almost for free*.

The difference is in training and education, (note: not to be confused with intellectual, elitist, Jefferson-wannabe) to even know how to get tied into the internet. Let alone they don't just babble away in an AOL chatroom, rather than ponder deep thoughts (Steven Hawking, f'rinstance). Once their online, see if the interation with Anonymous (or not-so-anonymous) people thoughout the internet turn them into a gaggle of enlightened souls.

*Free now, but $480 over the next two years...


--
Chief Frog Inspector

He's an idiot.

[JeremyYoung]

He seems to point at the "Digital Divide" as a major reason why online "communities" are for the elite, the wealthy. What hogwash. 1) Linux is free. 2) There are free ISP's. 3) Linux runs well on old 486's and pentiums. 4) 486's and pentiums are dirt cheap, cheaper than a portable CD player.

Re:The real difference...

[Wraithmaster]

I would like to point out that virtual communities are not entirely homogenous. Look at this very site, for instance: A good part of the discussion here is composed of people debating issues from opposing viewpoints. For example, I am not a Libertarian, and so disagree with other /. members on many political issues--indeed, I was involved in a very interesting little discussion about voting not long ago. I think it is precisely this diversity of opinion that appeals to many members of virtual communitites.

Of course, that being said, I can't deny that the *overall structuring* of these things is somewhat homogenous. For example, you won't find people carrying on long, involved discussions of home and garden care on /. (I don't think). Even so, is that so different from real life? Don't we tend to self-organize into social units based on shared interests and views? For example, nearly all my friends are intelligent, liberal people who are interested in computers and their applications. I attend a university (RPI) that caters specifically to technically inclined students.

So, you see, virtual communities are in many ways simply logical extensions of existing, non-virtual communities. Mind, I don't think they can ever really *replace* real-life communities--the modes of communication available to us over the 'net right now simply aren't sufficient to simulate real person-to-person interaction--but I do feel that they can become strongly integrated. For example, I have a group of friends who regularly socialize in #gifted on the undernet, but still get together in real life on a fairly regular basis (well, those of us on the same side of the continent, anyhow). In fact, I first spoke to several members of this group on IRC, and later grew to count them among my best friends.

Okay, that's enough rambling and ranting for now. Until next time,

Wraithmaster
www.wraithmaster.com -- Chicken soup for the spleen.

Entry cost

[levik]

I think the entry cost associated with joining the "vitrual community" (I hate that buzzword) of the Internet, cannot really be held against it. In practice, yes, it does prevent the poor and the uneducated from participating in the life online.

However, this is not something that is inherent to the idea of the internet, rather it is a flaw that evolved during its implementation.

If internet was accessible through public kiosks throughout the world, and everyone would be allocated personal space to use as their own hard drive, the idea of the internet would not be changed. Just becasue currently you must have your own computer to participate, does not mean that the principles of open communications have failed to provide uniform access to the underpriveleged. Rather, it can be said that no scheme has been developed yet to tap the full potential of the equality offered by the open information system that is the internet.

Re:Virtual Communities?

[MaxGrant]

I'm getting virtually nothing done here at work while I read slashdot. I think that counts too.

Re:Nah...

[Rahaeli]

> The web only has "forums" not true communities. There is no real interaction on the web,
> just reaction. Without ongoing interaction, there can't be any form of community,
> because no one knows how to work and be with one another, they just know how to anticipate
> and react to the actions of each other. It's a difference.

Yes, which is why -- repeat after me -- the web is not the internet. Yes, "the web" is mostly a non-interactive, eyeball-driven, point-and-drool, entertainment-for-the-masses medium. I'd say that /. and k5 and other community-driven weblogs are the closest you'll find to breaking that paradigm. On the web.

However, there's still Usenet, there's still MOO, there's still email ... there's still a lot of things. I wouldn't knock the idea of a "virtual community" that quickly. Most of the people I consider my closest friends in the world are part of my "online" community.

Personally, I think that Russ Allbery said it best. If people haven't read his "Rant about Usenet", then I don't think they can quite see just how deeply community *can* run.

The internet is more than web browsing

[Y3HarB-y*qOi!(5Q1]

You have to understand that the internet is only really the internet when it includes all that one can accomplish with an IP address to meet their needs with. Unattented access to various sites on the internet is one of the things that is extremely nice. Many times I have not have the patience to spend hours looking for something on a web site but sent my trusty web spider to look at it for me. I get all the information and can grep it and look for anything I need. I can print it out and save it for future use and make a great deal of discovery at a later date and all of the data is preserved. I can obtain software that will enable my comptuer not to remain outdated as far as it's functionality. I can garner information from disperate sources that I wouldn't have access to save for the internet's use of IP addresses. A bunch of windows boxes with IE on them dosn't constitute access in the strictest sense. It's also incompatable with the nature of what people really mean when they say online.

For those who want a bit more than armchair theory

[Howard Rheingold]

I've done some thinking and research -- direct observation, experiment, and scholarly -- about this issue. The uncopyedited version of my new chapter for my ancient book, The Virtual Community, is at http://www.rheingold.com/VirtualCommunity.html The new MIT Press edition, including the new chapter and an extensive bibliography for those who care to look at the actual social science research that has been conducted, will be available November 1. http://mitpress.mit.edu/book-home.tcl?isbn=0262681 218 The short answer -- it's easy to be glib about the subject, easy to theorize from your armchair, and easy to miss the big picture. I don't claim to have a black-and-white answer, but I do claim to have made a serious attempt to elevate the level of discourse to include the many ambiguities and shades of gray that seem to be lost in the usual "it IS community/it ISN'T community" debates.

Virtual Communities?

[mindstrm]

Well.. I have the same set of people, whom I have never met in person, who I speak with on a daily basis about a great deal of things, for the past 5 years or so. Are they not part of my 'virtual community'?

I order supplies at work online, and deal with sales people virtually all the time. I almost never talk to them on the phone.. aren't they part of my virtual community?

I've never met my stock broker in person.. I look at my account online, email him, and talk to him on the phone (good to do SOME things on the phone)_. Isn't htat kind of virtual?

And I videoconference with our head office 4000 miles away. Isn't that 'virtual'?

Virtual communities != physical communities

[tangram]

You can read Lockard's essay, or some earlier permutation of it, for yourself.

Lockard addresses several ideals about online communities. Some of these pertain to whether the Internet will be the Great Leveler, producing a classless, commonly-owned, universally accessible forum for communication. Lockard says this is false.

Fair enough. The Internet is not free. Getting connected requires owning or accessing a certain amount of equipment, having a certain amount of free time to spend online rather than working, a certain level of technical skill, and basic literacy. The same could be said for living in Wellesly, Andover, Concord, or any of the other upscale physical communities surrounding Boston. The median household yearly income in Massachusetts is about $29K; the average asessed tax value of houses in Concord is around $394K. This is not inclusive. I wouldn't call them diverse communities, either.

"Cybericity does not replicate material communities in a parallel world where we can reformulate communality." I also agree with this. I don't use the Internet to get closer to my physical community. I use it to get information about it. For instance:

• Who's running for the school board, and where is my polling station?
• Where's that Taste of the Town food fest being held?
• Where can I find a Unitarian church, and do they have a web page describing themselves?
• Is it true my office is on a toxic waste site? (Yes. Don't lick the dirt.)

The Internet does as much for physical community building as the phone book: I go there to find information, which might lead me to go out in my neighborhood. It doesn't create social relationships by itself. I have to go interact.

Why should online communities mirror geographical ones? Yes, it's important to participate in my geographic community, and it would be swell if folks used the Internet to strengthen participation. This isn't the benchmark for whether something constitutes a community.

Community is a social process. Lockard is correct that it is more than a mere "electronic affinity group". There are websites I check frequently, like Slashdot or the Boston Globe, and then there are communities I belong to. The distinction is whether one treats the site as a source of information or as a group of people whose input you want.

For instance, I've run a mailing list for women martial artists for about four years. Some posts are for information, like "how do I train after knee surgery", and are posted because someone out there has that information. Others are for feedback ("I'm facing this situation, what's your take on it") or just social ("wish me luck on my belt test"), because the poster wants to talk about it with her peers. That transformation from information source to peer is what makes it a community.

So, in summary, Lockard is right that the Internet is not a panacea to the inequities we see in society, nor is it revitalizing involvement in our neighborhoods, though it does contain some elements of that. He is incorrect that a community requires a physical presence.

On a tangent, I've been pondering over what conditions foster community. Some factors are:

• Participants building up individual identities. You know who you're talking to.
• High signal to noise ratio.
• A magic number of posts -- too many drives people away; too few is just an announcement list.
• Enough of a focus that you have something to talk about. I've seen very general lists, like "This is a list for the town of X" on eGroups, that fizzle out for lack of something to say.
• A few alpha-posters that invest time into high-quality posts.

Any thoughts on this?

--tangram