Thursday, September 10, 2009
The Friendship of Bodies
The Cyberspace world has become a world where you are free to be whom ever you please and a place of where your identity and real life can be put on hold until you find the right time and confidence to uncover yourself. The WELL (Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link) is the perfect place where you could carry on public conversations and exchange your reality with that of your fake identity.
Like in the article “Daily Life in Cyberspace” by Howard Rheingold, we can acknowledge how a person’s everyday life revolves around this WELL. As Rheingold himself says
“The WELL felt like an authentic community to me from the start because it was grounded in my everyday physical world.”
He felt attached to these virtual communities where shared alliances formed by simply the use of words on screens to exchange pleasantries, knowledge, emotions, love, and support. In virtual communities all that has to be done is the same as you would do in real life, but with the difference of leaving your body behind.
This bondage that the virtual community has created can turn into reality when you decide to confront those friends that you’ve spoken for years without seeing their body. As Rheingold describes when the time of virtual and reality to meet; it could be a drastic moment. Just as he attended those parties where all his WELL friends were, the reality was that when he entered through that door there wasn’t a decipherable face in the house.
Nonetheless the bondage of friendship in the virtual community has developed into a medium so desired by many like Rheingold whom only wish to help each other through hard times, solve (and fail to solve) vexing interpersonal problems together and in the end when the time comes only hope to meet each others bodies.
Like in the article “Daily Life in Cyberspace” by Howard Rheingold, we can acknowledge how a person’s everyday life revolves around this WELL. As Rheingold himself says
“The WELL felt like an authentic community to me from the start because it was grounded in my everyday physical world.”
He felt attached to these virtual communities where shared alliances formed by simply the use of words on screens to exchange pleasantries, knowledge, emotions, love, and support. In virtual communities all that has to be done is the same as you would do in real life, but with the difference of leaving your body behind.
This bondage that the virtual community has created can turn into reality when you decide to confront those friends that you’ve spoken for years without seeing their body. As Rheingold describes when the time of virtual and reality to meet; it could be a drastic moment. Just as he attended those parties where all his WELL friends were, the reality was that when he entered through that door there wasn’t a decipherable face in the house.
Nonetheless the bondage of friendship in the virtual community has developed into a medium so desired by many like Rheingold whom only wish to help each other through hard times, solve (and fail to solve) vexing interpersonal problems together and in the end when the time comes only hope to meet each others bodies.
Comments:
<< Home
A good post. As one of the first "virtual communities" the WELL opened people's eyes to the possiblities of cyberspace.
Post a Comment
<< Home
