After reading Smart Mobs, I realized I was relatively uneducated about how powerful networking and communities are in today’s world. Community is the word I want to focus on. Communities are found in business with many business models that are popping up today. Communities of professionals to network and talk to eachother. I can send my resume to a community of professionals to get an internship. I find communities that receive texts and other miscellaneous stuff. But what I argue is that our notion of communities are changing. As people we congregate at concerts, conferences, and organizations as a community of people with related interests. We as humans have an innate need to do this. We constantly are aggregating into groups. If humans were to individualize, it would go against what we are all about. I think that in today’s world, with advancing technology and allowing people across the world to interact with eachother, we are just reforming how we perceive our notions of communities. I see it as change, whether positive or negative I am not sure. So far, this new idea of community is creeping up behind our backs.
Friday, February 8, 2008
Community?
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4 comments:
I agree with what you said about how communities are changing. They are no longer defined in the same way because half the time we do not even know who is in our community. This is due to the advancement in technology that allows us to bond with other nameless faceless people. Ignoring the fact that this access to other people across the globe can be abused I see the new communities as a good thing. I am a strong advocate of spreading social justice and being able to befriend someone for similar interests regardless of where they come from is a great step in the right direction. When building online communities with screen names it is sometimes impossible to decipher a gender. Instead what they are typing is what matters most.
I think an interesting way to tie this into the technology we talked about is how the term 'community' is being re-shaped. I agree that we all have an innate craving to belong, and that we satisfy that thirst by congregating with the corresponding community, but our technological capabilities have changed that. Now we can congregate while remaining home alone, which really is a contradiction in itself. I dont like the idea of internet communities, I believe they are not communities (as my personal interpretation of the word) but rather virtual communication hot-zones. I do not consider myself part of the UW-Madison community because of my wisc.edu email address, but rather that every week day I physically congregate with fellow peers and professors on campus.
I think that we are in danger of losing communities in the way we know them now. And by "communities" I am more referring to gatherings or groups of people that get together regularly to keep in touch. I was talking to my Grandma the other day and she was telling me about different weekly dances her and my Grandpa would go to many nights a week since they met. Now with the advancement of technology, people can stay at home in there comfort zones and just watch tv, play video games, work online, etc... and that is taking away greatly from not only the public life of people, but also people's health. Personally I think we all should try to become more willing to get out and be active and meet as many people as possible...
Yes, I believe in the future technology can turn negative or positive where we do not interact with people. We will have to see. I also believe; however, technology could bring us together (face to face)in a better fashion. Technology someday could bring us together with video peer to peer for the masses. Or digitized projections of ourself in which we interact via this method (however this is not peer to peer however). We will have to see what the future holds for us!
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