Re: Virtual communities on ABC

Brad M Biglow (bmb@SUNSET.CSE.NAU.EDU)
Fri, 10 Dec 1993 19:50:24 -0700

On Dec 10, 4:25pm, "douglass st.christian....." wrote:

If you will permit me to edit:
}
} i have only one very brief, doubtless feverish, comment. the phrse virtual
} community is obviously a qaulified one. Calling anthro-l a virtual
} community rather than a community is distinguishing it in some way. I have
} spent the last several years talking with some anthros doing e-net
} research and to date none have been able to explain what exactly a virtual
} community is, as over against say a real community.
}
} maybe you have spin on this. mine is that while e-net communities are
} interesting, they are not any more nor less virtual than any other
} community i would care to define.
}
} any thinks???
}
} dgl
}
}-- End of excerpt from "douglass st.christian....."


According to Rheingold's 1993 "The Virtual Community":

Virtual Communities: social aggregations that emerge from the Net when
enough people carry on public discussions long
enough, with sufficient human feeling, to form webs
of personal relationships in cyberspace (p. 5).

Cyberspace: originally a term from William Gibson's science-fiction novel
"Neuromancer," is the name some people use for the conceptual
space where human relationships, data, wealth, and power are
manifested by people using CMC (computer-mediated communications)
technology (p. 5).




--
Brad M. Biglow
Department of Anthropology
PO Box 15200
Northern Arizona University
Flagstaff, AZ 86011
bmb@sunset.cse.nau.edu , bmb@ghost.cse.nau.edu
bmb@nauvax.ucc.nau.edu , bbiglow@nyx.cs.du.edu
bbiglow@nyx10.cs.du.edu