Thoughts on Mod. 1.2

The readings of Rheingold and Dibell were more of a narrative concept. At first when I was reading the "Daily life in Cyberspace" I really thought Rheingold was talking about real life events and interactions, but after a while he started talking about identities and meeting those virtual characters face to face, then I realised that Rheingold was talking about a mixture of online and offline interactions. For me that was very interesting because earlier I used to think that being cyber was just being online and be online selves, nothing to do with being physically there. However, after reading this chapter, I am beginning to realise that being a part of online community is based on a certain level of trust and understanding between people as well as occationally meeting them offline in the real world as well.

And then I went back to the debate styled discussion in class yesterday (Monday 14th Mar), had to re-think some of my ideas about what a community is. I totally agree with Charles idea of what constitutes a community. However, here are some of my very messed up and confused thoughts :)

Could the community be a pack of people living in the same physical or virtual space, weather they know or interact with each other or not? Could you be part of a community even if you don't share a single interest with the rest of the crowd, but you just happen to live in the neighbourhood?

Sure, a physical boundary was setup, and people started to live in the area and it was given a name....now is that area a community? yep, even if there are some socio misfits, a couple of fake psychiatrists ;) around and you won't keep your door unlocked during night or day the neighbourhood will still be a "traditionally setup" community.

BUT is it the same in VR?All the above mentioned characters apply to VR communities as well. People of a same interest group come online and live there, there'll be the odd one out posting comments that are not relevant and the members will need user names and passwords. Fair enough, it is a community.

At this point I refer to the Dibbell reading "a rape in cyberspace". people go online, form their IDs and personalities (doesn't have to reflect who they are in real life), have supernatural or wizardry powers, have their fantasy related vocabulary such as "teleporting" and stuff. All that doesn't sound real to me. Sure, there are real people with fake identities and powers sitting behind computers, but I just can't shake this feeling of unreality. When the rape happened virtually some of the players in the living room had real feelings and wanted real action taken against the character who committed the crime(which didn't really happen), and finally they managed to kill(virtually) him. However, the next day he was back under a different name. Reincarnation? hehehe. sounds a bit unreal to me.

So as you can see i am a bit confused and not yet convinced on the authenticity of VR communities. I hope I manage to clear these doubts in my mind as we progress throught this semester. :)

cheers
shaba