Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Vitual Communities
In today's world we live in many different communities. We have our schools, camps, sport teams, friends, family, and the biggest of them all, the internet. The internet community consists of all the people on the world wide web. They are constantly spending their time uploaded, downloading, sharing, ripping, instant messaging, threading, blogging, and god knows what else inside of this community.
But what exactly is a community? According to the most community like encyclopedia online, wikipedia.com, it states that a community consists of organisms tht are interacting with each other within an evironment (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community). This makes the internet our environment, and the interaction comes in so many different forms. Some of the most popular forms include blogging sites like xanga, blogger, and blogspot, there are profile pages for the singles community like match.com, networking sites like linkdin, or gaming sites and so many more. All of these sites have one thing in common; they are full of people that love what they do and wish to be involved with other people that also share the same interests.
This is very useful to many people. For example, if someone wants to find out how to change the oil in their car, they can go to a site like expertvillage.com to learn how to fix it from an expert. Sites like these are very useful and help many people out. On other sites such as craigslist.com you can post many different types of threads, and pretty much anyone in the world can answer to your posts. Aside from providing helpful information, people inside of these communities can sort of create their own virtual identities. In games such as World of Warcraft, players create a character which they can fully customize. Inside of this game they enter a realm, which is a virtual community. Once inside this realm, they can interact with other players, talking to them via text scripts or even voice chat. This allows for a level of expression where people can gain or loose respect depending on what happens in the game. Virtual communities are changing the way we do things. For example, sex. You can log into a chat room with 30 other people and watch couples having sex on a webcam. This simple device puts people face to face and they can be across the world from one another. It brings people together in a way, putting them into groups where they know that everyone else feels the same, and they feel safe and welcome.
But what exactly is a community? According to the most community like encyclopedia online, wikipedia.com, it states that a community consists of organisms tht are interacting with each other within an evironment (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community). This makes the internet our environment, and the interaction comes in so many different forms. Some of the most popular forms include blogging sites like xanga, blogger, and blogspot, there are profile pages for the singles community like match.com, networking sites like linkdin, or gaming sites and so many more. All of these sites have one thing in common; they are full of people that love what they do and wish to be involved with other people that also share the same interests.
This is very useful to many people. For example, if someone wants to find out how to change the oil in their car, they can go to a site like expertvillage.com to learn how to fix it from an expert. Sites like these are very useful and help many people out. On other sites such as craigslist.com you can post many different types of threads, and pretty much anyone in the world can answer to your posts. Aside from providing helpful information, people inside of these communities can sort of create their own virtual identities. In games such as World of Warcraft, players create a character which they can fully customize. Inside of this game they enter a realm, which is a virtual community. Once inside this realm, they can interact with other players, talking to them via text scripts or even voice chat. This allows for a level of expression where people can gain or loose respect depending on what happens in the game. Virtual communities are changing the way we do things. For example, sex. You can log into a chat room with 30 other people and watch couples having sex on a webcam. This simple device puts people face to face and they can be across the world from one another. It brings people together in a way, putting them into groups where they know that everyone else feels the same, and they feel safe and welcome.
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A good post. Clearly community is a big part of the virtual world today. What is the difference between a virtual community and a social network? Is one just a newer buzzword to describe the same idea?
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