reinvention

from blogger:reinvention

I’m back. I’ve been using Manila lately for blogging but I thought I’d look into blogger a bit more so I’m familiar with it as well.

from bramilo.weblogs.com

Mike Godwin’s Nine Principles for Making Virtual Communities Work

These nine principles were articulated by Mike Godwin based on his analysis of The Well (Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link), a prominent cyberspace with discussion groups and other virtual community elements.

The nine principles are:

1. Use software that promotes good discussions.
2. Don’t impose a length limitation on postings.
3. Front-load your system with talkative, diverse people.
4. Let the users resolve their own disputes.
5. Provide institutional memory.
6. Promote continuity.
7. Be host to a particular interest group.
8. Provide places for children.
9. Most Important: Confront the users with a crisis.

Mike Godwin (mnemonic@eff.org) is online counsel for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. His complete discussion of the Nine Principles is on Wired’s archives: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.06/vc.principles.html.

from bramilo.weblogs.com

Amy Jo Kim’s book Community Building on the Web is a well-regarded book on building virtual communities. The book outlines “Nine Timeless Design Principles for Community-Building” that cover the basic aspects of building communities online. Kim also teaches the Nine Principles and related matter on Community Building on the Web through a course at Stanford University.

Nine Timeless Design Principles for Community Building on the Web:

From “Community Analysis Template, CS377B Designing Online Communities (http://www.naima.com/CS377B/template.html)

1) Define the PURPOSE of the community

2) Create distinct, member-extensible GATHERING PLACES

3) Create MEMBER PROFILES that evolve over time

4) Promote effective LEADERSHIP

5) Define a clear-yet-flexible CODE OF CONDUCT

6) Organize and promote CYCLIC EVENTS

7) Provide a RANGE OF ROLES that couple power with responsibility

Facilitate member-created SUB-GROUPS

9) Integrate the online environment with the REAL WORLD

For more information on Amy Jo Kim and her work, see:

Biography: http://www.naima.com/bio.html
Community Building on the Web: http://www.naima.com/community

from bramilo.weblogs.com

Note: This piece was originally written as an assignment for Net503 (A socio-technological introduction to the Internet), a subject I am doing at Curtin University as part of my Fellowship.

The Internet may be the most significant technological development in the late twentieth century. It affects everyone directly or indirectly. It promises (or threatens) to overtake how we continue to live our lives.

Cyberspace is, however, perhaps the most over-hyped technological development of our time, which prevents a good understanding of its socio-technological impact (p. iv). In the face of such unprecedented hype, Kitchin and like-minded analysts call for a critical look at cyberspatial technologies and their social implications.

Kitchin* demonstrates that there are several socio-technological theoretical perspectives that seek to make sense of cyberspace. He calls for a combination of perspectives, a new approach, to accommodate the complexities of Cyberspace. While I agree with Kitchin on the need for a new approach, I wish to focus on some aspects of the impact of technology, the Internet specifically, on social transformation.

By social transformation I mean basic changes in social and power structures, in how social forces collide to push society (and technology) onward. These collisions are often categorised by the left as contradictions or dualisms based on class, gender, ethnicity, and ecology (i.e the contradiction between humankind and nature). These basic contradictions are also expressed as the dynamic between centre and periphery, mainstream and alternative, dominant and emergent, old and new, even oppressor and oppressed.

Given this focus, I support Robins’s view (cited by Kitchin, p. 22) as the most useful framework to deal with the relationship of technology and social transformation. Robins argues that “cyberspace is not a fundamentally different world. Rather it overlies real space in a symbiotic relationship” and that “changes cyberspace is predicted to bring about must be placed within the broader context of the social and political upheaval that is taking place in the world today.”

Kitchin, again citing Robins, reminds us that “cyberspatial technologies are the children of military-funded inventions, and it will be business and industry that will nurture future developments and seek to protect the rewards.” (p. 22)

The Internet traces its origins to the development of computers during the Second World War, for the purpose solving military problems. The further development of computer and networking technology was fueled by desires to maintain strategic advantage, particularly for the USA and the West, during the Cold War and the Space Race era.

Academic needs also played a significant part in expanding the Internet. While it may be argued that this was a neutral use of technology (by virtue of notions of academic freedom and pure scientific pursuit), it must be considered that computing and networking facilities for the academic community were also funded by corporations such as IBM.

The computing and hobbyist communities also contributed to the growth of the Internet through BBSs, Usenet, and other popular applications. Today the majority of Internet users are private individuals who may or may not believe in the military-capitalist agendas but who, because of the almost-total commercialisation of the Internet, are more like cyberproletarians and cyberconsumers of the global new economy.

The Internet also assisted in widening the gap between haves and have-nots. Much of the infrastructure is in developed countries and dominated by big business interests. Most of the world’s people do not have access to the Internet. Even in an industrialised country such as Australia, only a third of households are connected to the Internet, demonstrating a digital divide – two-thirds of the Australian population then are potentially at a disadvantage in the information economy.

The Internet then, like other technologies, is governed by questions of ownership, distribution, access, equity, control, power. It can be considered, in old-fashioned political-economic terms, a means of production that is owned and controlled by elite, minority social interests. The Internet is a mainstream technology, largely owned and controlled by mainstream interests.

But like other mainstream technologies or instruments (e.g. the electoral system), the Internet provides some latitude for popular and democratic participation, if only to keep the masses entertained while subjugated. It is within this latitude – or “democratic space” — that alternative agendas abound and where (real and virtual) struggles for social transformation can and do happen.

Cyberspace can be a stage — and cyberspatial technologies the tools — for social and political upheaval, particularly through the actions of increasingly disenchanted cyberproletarians and cyberconsumers. To borrow from the social constructivists, there are indeed “micro-level social processes of human agency” that are “shaping and reappropriating cyberspace” to perhaps eventually change the nature and structures of cyberspace and real space.

Within the democracy of the Internet exist a myriad of expressions of discontent, protest, as well as alternative visions. There are many websites, discussion groups, and email/Usenet lists on every imaginable issue or social cause. The Resistant Media movement, where multimedia and cyberspatial technologies are repurposed to be critical of social ills (real and virtual) is a growing area of digital media activity.

The Internet has also become a propaganda battlefield, exemplified by competing web sites during the Balkan wars and mutual attacks on web sites by Israeli and Palestinian webwarriors in recent Middle East conflicts. Another militant variety of cyberactivism is Floodnet, where Zapatistas and their supporters attacked web sites allied to the Mexican government in protest.

Internet.au (March 2001) warns of the rise of cyberterrorism around the world. Direct attacks on cyberspatial infrastructure are not uncommon as demonstrated by what could be purely anti-social actions by the authors of the Melissa and I Love You viruses, and the Denial of Service attacks on Amazon and Yahoo last year. But the relative ease with which the whole Internet was disrupted by a few persons may encourage more techno-sabotage in future (probably serving anti-social as well as pro-social motivations).

These examples of critical, alternative, and activist uses of the Internet are by no means dominant. But as disenchantment with the real (and virtual) worlds grows, so will the critical and alternative elements — or the shaping and reappropriation — of cyberspace grow.

If the resistant and critical and socially-transformative potential of the Internet can be assumed, the question is how that potential can be realised and maximised. The majority of the world’s population now cannot participate in cyberspatial social transformation movements because they have no access. Would it be a good goal then to accelerate the democratisation of cyberspatial technologies – somewhat akin to arming the population in traditional revolutionary terms — to allow for the most, if not universal, participation in cyberspatial “revolution”?

Cyberspatial technologies will indeed transform society in ways that Kitchin describes, particularly trough the “three revolutions.” What intrigues me are possibilities for democratising social participation in the further development of Cyberspace, in a way perhaps that accommodates other more directly socially transformative revolutionary processes.

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*Rob Kitchin, Cyberspace: The World in the Wires, John Wiley & Sons, England, 1998. This is the main reference for this piece.

from bramilo.weblogs.com

Note: This piece is based on a posting I made to the Net503 (A socio-technological introduction to the Internet) discussion group at Curtin Uni, where I am enrolled as part of my Fellowship. The piece was a response to the discussion question: What social, political, economic and cultural characteristics of the Internet today can be traced back to the way that the technologies of the Internet have been developed and pioneered historically?

I am particularly interested in the community (non-government, non-commercial) aspects of the Internet, which Kitchin* recognises as one of the key historical factors for the nature of the Internet today. While the Internet was developed initially for military, government, and scientific uses, then for commercial purposes, it was the emergence and growth of BBSs, Usenet, email, and MUDs that brought millions of users to the Internet. I think most Internet users these days use it for all sorts of pursuits, including personal communication, entertainment, community-building, and other non-government, non-military, non-commercial purposes.

I used BBSs in the late 1980s to the early 1990s. It was all text-based, very DOS-centric, slow, and dial-in numbers were always busy. I like it anyway because it was a local phone call away (although I did log on to interstate and overseas BBSs a few times) and I didn’t have to pay for online time like you do with ISPs these days. Even when the Internet and the Web were dominant, I saw value in BBSs because of their simplicity, accessibility, and in some cases their tighter security. BBSs, however, are almost gone. I was also very interested in Kitchin’s account of freenets and other public networks; I am not aware if there were similar networks in Australia in the past or currently.

While it is true that commercial interests have dominated the Internet, those that seek to keep it public and open are challenging this situation. One of the most popular and recent developments on the Internet, for example, are Peer-to-Peer (P2P) technologies exemplified by Napster, which has been almost driven out of business by commercial music interests. P2P promises, among other things, to revolutionise searching for and sharing relevant information (including but not limited to MP3s) yet sound business models for it have yet to be found (Red Herring, December 2000).

A computer in every home?

I would like to see popular (or public, open, democratic) usage of the Internet grow, and for non-commercial and non-government/non-military uses to develop alongside other uses. There are, however, many issues to do with this area of Internet development, including issues of access and equity. As has been pointed out, the Internet is American- or “western-” dominated, English is the dominant language, and most of the world’s population is not connected.

Assuming that widespread and democratic access to the Internet is a good thing (putting aside debates on pollution, RSI, social dysfunction, etc.), there is the issue of how Internet access and usage can be democratised to the maximum. Do we assume that to achieve widespread virtual activity that everyone or every household must have a computer? If so, then it will take time. Only a third of Australian households, for instance, are connected to the Internet. Access to it from remote areas is more difficult and expensive. The situation in other less developed countries in terms of connectedness (and access) is more difficult.

Should we then pine and work for a computer and an Internet connection for everyone, like what Singapore is reportedly attempting to do? There are already too many computers on the planet, and a lot of them are ending up as landfill (”redundant technology”) because of very fast rates of obsolescence and other reasons. Many of these destined-for-the dump machines are perfectly okay for email and other Internet functions but they’re simply old and discarded for the latest that the multinationals have to sell. Meanwhile, the vast majority of people on the planet don’t have computers at all.

So if we could save a lot of redundant machines, extend the working lives of most computers, and avoid the overproduction of these things, should we strive to redistribute technology to the millions of digital have-nots? Yes and No. The Internet will grow and it does bring benefits to individuals and communities. Redistribution or democratisation of technology is good but it does not necessarily need to happen along the personal computing (or a computer in every home) model.

There are community or cooperative computing models, where technological resources are shared and used collectively and equitably, to complement personal computing models. This might mean more cybercafes (but more affordable), community computing/Internet centres, increased access through public libraries, techno-cooperatives, and the like. There are working models in some parts of the world. There’s one in Delhi that I’ve heard of where a new media collective (called Sarai) have been providing Internet-cum-desktop publishing services to a neighbourhood (and where at least 15 people share one PC for all their work). I’m working with some people in Darwin to plan for and eventually set up a community-based multimedia resource centre with pooled equipment and other resources that might operate as a cooperative. I am all for democratic access to cyberspace but access should perhaps not always equate to individual ownership of technology assets (and liabilities!).

In the belly of the (digital) monster

As the Internet was invented and is fueled by big business (and originally by the military), it is really possible for online communities to thrive in an sort of environment? I think it is not only possible but necessary.

The infrastructure of the Internet is similar in some ways to the mass media (radio, television, print): capitalists own and run them but sometimes other groups and interests get to use them too (and even get to set up their own radio stations and newspapers, or produce their own television programs). There have always been alternative uses for media and the Internet is no different — Floodnet’s sabotage of Mexican government web sites in support of Zapatistas is a famous example. Less famous and more popular uses for building communities online are the many, many email lists, egroups, bulletin boards, web site farms (like geocities), and blogs; the P2P stuff also threatens dominant commercial paradigms for the Internet.

The Internet, as Kitchin observes, is largely unpoliced (in spite of misguided attempts to censor and control it by governments like our own) so there is still (at least for now) a lot of room to manoeuvre to foster alternative interests on it. But even if the Internet became more tightly policed (and more narrowly subservient to commercial and other elitist interests), ways will be found to make alternative voices heard (with the help of hackers and crackers maybe). We should use the net for alternative, even non-dominant interests especially as it (as Kitchin also observes) provides a very fast and cheap means of mass communication and interaction.

The Internet was built partly through popular usage and development, sometimes in conflict with dominant commercial-military-government agendas for the Internet. This popular (i.e. democratic) aspect of the Internet grows, and so do the conflicts with other agendas. It is possible however to build on the popular history of the Net to enhance its democratisation, possibly using growth (or “non-growth”) models other than consumerist computing.

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*Rob Kitchin, Cyberspace: The World in the Wires, John Wiley & Sons, England, 1998. This is the main reference for this piece.