The Net of Life.
To understand how we should view the Internet as a media tool, DiMaggio et al make a valuable statement: the Internet is a meta-medium(Agre, 1998), referring both to the technical infrastructure and the uses this is put into. As such, the Internet is shaping the scope of mediated communication ever since its popular explosion. And we know by now that mediated communication is crucial in binding societies together by building various forms of social networks. This week's readings deal with the role Internet plays in our everyday life; naturally, the question loops back on what 'network' means in our everyday life. network forms that have been theoretically considered but were technically unfeasible, have been or are prospected to be made possible via the Internet.
In linking Internet with the features of changing scope of community in a urban public sphere, Calhoun took a rather conservative view of Internet-mediated human networks. He asserts that the kind of relationships that are bound by the 'online' foster "categorical identities", rather than multiplex and systematic relationships. The ideals of e-democracy is bound to be outrun by e-commercialization. The Internet facilitates maintenance of dispersed f2f networks, the ability to telecommunicate, socio-spatial enclaves, and buiding of a community without propinquity. Thus online communities tend to function on the basis of categories of similarity more often than they strengthen local networks. For him, "The Internet is thus a very useful tool, but the strength of these movements still lies largely in their local roots; the Internet is most empowering when it adds to the capacities of people organized outside of it, not when an attempt is made to substitute "virtual community" for the real thing."
But is it really so? Calhoun takes some of the prominent social movements as examples, but mainly rests on theoretical assertions. Thus the "Internet as part of everyday life" view by Haythornthwaite & Wellman is a valid and much-needed one. It is not looking into Internet in terms of what it should and could do, but what it already does. They emphasize the need for actual empirical studies on how people actually use the Net, based on survey studies in many parts of the world (although already outdated). They summarize the large chunks of findings into tendencies of increasing access, committment, domestication, longer work hours, networked society, among others. But the most overarching theme of all is the notion of "networked individualism" which we have already introduced to in Castells' work. This concept is that people in the Internet age live in networks rather than in groups, and each person is taking charge of one's own network.
However, the thing we must always take into account is that this is not about whether such forms of social networks (or communities) are desirable or not. It is already upon us, a part of our everyday life. We still continue to have our social bonds in our spatial dimensions, and now we are also getting more networked in the 'communities without propinquities' as well.
Then, how will the "individualistic networks" that is more or less bound to be effected by categorical relationships interact with the more multiplex and systematic relationships that can be found by locally-based communities of direct interaction? Thus the question of Internet and everyday life is nothing else than the problem of how the two kinds of social networks smoothly can be integrated into one's everyday life, and how we should utilize the valuable mediating tools that Internet provides.
In linking Internet with the features of changing scope of community in a urban public sphere, Calhoun took a rather conservative view of Internet-mediated human networks. He asserts that the kind of relationships that are bound by the 'online' foster "categorical identities", rather than multiplex and systematic relationships. The ideals of e-democracy is bound to be outrun by e-commercialization. The Internet facilitates maintenance of dispersed f2f networks, the ability to telecommunicate, socio-spatial enclaves, and buiding of a community without propinquity. Thus online communities tend to function on the basis of categories of similarity more often than they strengthen local networks. For him, "The Internet is thus a very useful tool, but the strength of these movements still lies largely in their local roots; the Internet is most empowering when it adds to the capacities of people organized outside of it, not when an attempt is made to substitute "virtual community" for the real thing."
But is it really so? Calhoun takes some of the prominent social movements as examples, but mainly rests on theoretical assertions. Thus the "Internet as part of everyday life" view by Haythornthwaite & Wellman is a valid and much-needed one. It is not looking into Internet in terms of what it should and could do, but what it already does. They emphasize the need for actual empirical studies on how people actually use the Net, based on survey studies in many parts of the world (although already outdated). They summarize the large chunks of findings into tendencies of increasing access, committment, domestication, longer work hours, networked society, among others. But the most overarching theme of all is the notion of "networked individualism" which we have already introduced to in Castells' work. This concept is that people in the Internet age live in networks rather than in groups, and each person is taking charge of one's own network.
However, the thing we must always take into account is that this is not about whether such forms of social networks (or communities) are desirable or not. It is already upon us, a part of our everyday life. We still continue to have our social bonds in our spatial dimensions, and now we are also getting more networked in the 'communities without propinquities' as well.
Then, how will the "individualistic networks" that is more or less bound to be effected by categorical relationships interact with the more multiplex and systematic relationships that can be found by locally-based communities of direct interaction? Thus the question of Internet and everyday life is nothing else than the problem of how the two kinds of social networks smoothly can be integrated into one's everyday life, and how we should utilize the valuable mediating tools that Internet provides.
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