This research is aimed at determining the future of online communities. With the rise of social network sites (SNS) there has become a distinct difference between websites set up for users to connect with one another based on common interests, and social sites that allow for a more personal network. This first paper will discuss the past of both topical based communities (referred to as “forums” in this project) and social networking sites, and how the members of these communities connected before the rise of such sites. The second paper will examine the present state of these communities and how there seems to be a blending of public discussion websites and SNS’, as well as a bridging of both offline and online communities. The final paper will examine where online communities are headed based on the theories and trends discussed in the first two papers. This project is being conducted to determine the future of online communities, and will draw on sources relevant to forums and SNS’, in particular one such community that has incorporated both. This research will answer an important question: Will internet forums become obsolete or evolve? The future of internet forums quite possibly will involve incorporating many features of social media, which opens the discussion of whether or not forums will exist as being separate from social media. Either way, it is obvious that forums will remain a fixture of online communities in the future; it just needs to be determined in what form this will be in.

The Past of Online Communities
The Present and Future of Online Communities
Presentation
Annotated Bibliography

Chris Caravello currently is a graduate student at the University of Washington, and is on track to complete his degree in Winter ’09. He began his career as a designer during his time at Florida State University, where he recieved his bachelors degree in graphic design. While living in Tallahassee, he began doing freelance design for musicians who lived in the area. Upon graduating from FSU in 2005, he moved to Los Angeles and took a job as a media designer for the Alsa Corporation. In the Fall of 2007 he moved to Seattle to enter the Masters program. In May 2008 he and his cousin, along with Alex Batess and Johnathan Lucas founded the Tyronehood network, which has grown from an online community set up for fans of the New Orleans music scene to a global social network featuring an online television site and a forum for its members to discuss music, travel, and lifestyles.

Upon finishing his Masters degree, Chris plans on moving back to the Gulf Coast to work as a designer and be closer to his young daughter. He is currently working on a project for the New Orleans based House of Shock.

After reading the article on the reasons young people choose IM over email, I would have to say that I generally agree with what the study shows.  The younger generation prefers IM to email because they like the instant gratification one receives when chatting via IM.  You type something, whomever you are speaking to recieves it right away and responds almost instantly.  I look at this as being practical.  It is the tool that most accurately mimics human conversation.  Especially with features such as chat rooms to allow multiple people to engage in the conversation, as well as most mobile devices allowing IM service.  Its as if friends can have an after class discussion, without being on school grounds, or at the mall, or any other place that young people congregate at to talk amongst themselves.

Another reason that I prefer IM to email, is that there are less barriers in place between messages.  There are no spam filters, no long gaps in pieces of conversation, and if something is not 100% clear in a message, I do not have to write back and then wait for a response for something to be cleared up.  Therefore work situations can go a lot smoother.

The level of interactivity offered is the biggest driving force in preferring IM over email, and the article had this to say on this point:

e-mail lacks the majority of functions that IM can provide, especially those considered as ‘interactivity’ items such as webcam, voice chat, conference chat, on line games, and voice mail. This deficiency can determine the choice of IM and e-mail.

This reiterate the fact that IM mirrors real face to face conversation, something email cannot presently offer effectively.  The sociability of IM is what its users like over email-instant response as well as knowing when their friends are online and free to converse with.  In my opinion and experience, it is this sociability that makes IM so popular.

2.  What interest groups have you joined or learned about in your time online that are doign the most to combat the problems our planet is facing?  Could these groups exist offline and without the help on the Internet?

3.  How could social networking sites organize members to not only become more aware of these problems facing Earth, but do actual physical work towards the common goal of protecting the Commons?  Which existing social networking site is best suited for this task?

Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons. Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all.

Published in 1968 and written by Garret Hardin, Tragedy of the Commons provides a startling look as to how we are killing our own planet with our irresponsible attitude in areas such as population and pollution. The “Commons” that is the focus of the article is any resource or area of the planet available to any member of the population. As our population grows in number, the abuse of the Commons becomes more and more noticeable on the environment. A few centuries ago, if a wasteful act was committed by someone, its impact would be minimal, if at all. Now as animal populations are nearing extinction and pollution ravages our natural habitats, those abuses are magnified. Hardin says that there are no technical solutions to this problem, this problem can only be addressed by the human race as a whole making a decision to determine what is a want, and what is a need, and we will have to come to realize that our planet is a finite resource. As in a growing population WILL eventually exhaust Earths ability to sustain this population.
Hardin gives the famous example of the shepherd to explain his theory of the Commons. A shepherd that is faced with adding another sheep to his herd despite this creating a strain on the resources of the land will almost ALWAYS choose to do so. It is because to most, personal gain > common gain. The shepherd fears that if he does not choose this way, then someone else will choose it and then will gain an advantage over him. This is the Tragedy of the Commons. We wish to add to our profits without limits on a planet that is limited.
Hardin’s solution to wastefulness is to make it a cheaper option to treat the problem than it is to continue being wasteful. In the case of pollution, make it cheaper to treat sewage than it is to continue dumping it into the environment. We need coercive laws in place to encourage these doomsday methods to stop. In the case of population, I believe it would apply as lowering taxes or other incentives to those that have fewer children. Add another member to the family, make the family pay more. Our existence as a welfare friendly state of course impedes this idea.
This can be tied into the Digital World. In his book “Here Comes Everybody”, Clay Shirky states that he believes the Commons will benefit from the creation of Digital Media due to the fact that interest groups can be formed easily via the web and thus communication between these groups is able to be done instantly and span the entire globe. As I have found in my research for this class, interest groups have long been a source of relief for the worlds problems, and the Digital Age has only made things easier for these groups to come into existence.
Despite Mr. Shirky being somewhat of an idol of mine, I will have to point out my belief that this Digital tool may actually be a double edged sword. While Digital Media has indeed made it easier for research to be done with access to information and resources, and has led to groups of like-minded scientists with the good of the planet in their causes to come together, it has also encouraged us to explore our planet, and thus create pollution as we speed off to see first hand the far away landscape we viewed online. Instead of going out with the girl we sit next to in class, we are meeting a girl online that lives in England and therefore getting on a smog blasting jet and spending our money on travel instead of going about our normal lives in our home cities. The Digital Age has allowed us to do so much without ever leaving our home computers, but it also has driven us to do so much thousands of miles away from it as well.
I guess I can say I am 100% guilty in both the light and dark side of Digital Media. This actually came into my mind as I sat and watched the following music video in a bar in Tallinn, Estonia last year. I was visiting Estonia purely on the fact that I had become interested in the country while surfing the web as well as talking to an Estonian girl that I had met on an online community.

Smite the shepherd and the sheep will be scattered

Hardin, G. 1968  The tragedy of the commons. Science (New York, N.Y.), 162(3859), http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/162/3859/1243

Shirky, Clay.  2008  Here comes everybody : the power of organizing without organizations / Clay Shirky Penguin Press, New York :

Digital Language = Far Reaching
- It is the 3rd great metamorphosis that allows us to communicate with others on a far reaching scale.
- Because of digital language, we are now “one homogeneous mass”, to quote Samuel Bowles.

Digital Language Timeline
-Telegraph
-Radio
-Telephone
-Television
-Internet
-Not all technology is readily adapted…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADHrVKPfK44#t=7m12s

Amateurism
-Amateur radio does still exist among hobbyist and enthusiast, and this proves very useful when national disasters or wars interrupt traditional means of communication.
-What amateurs today report things that “the media” sometimes misses?

Benkler On Todays Digital Age

“The Internet allows individuals to abandon the idea of the public sphere as primarily constructed of finished statements uttered by a small set of actors socially understood to be “the media” (whether state owned or commercial) and separated from society, and to move toward a set of social practices that see individuals as participating in a debate.”

New Media
As our world becomes computerized, media begins to change.
Lev Manovich’s 5 principles of New Media
1. Numerical Representation
-Media becomes programmable.
2. Modularity
-Fractal Structure
3. Automation
-Media creation, manipulation, access.
4. Variability
-Infinite versions.
5. Transcoding
-Computerization of media

And when you set it all in motion…….http://ultimateanna.com

Interactive Media
-“Closed” and “Open” Interactivity
-Following the mental structure of the creator, a predetermined path.
-Clicking a link, that goes to an image, that goes to the next image etc etc.
-True interactivity allows its users to choose their path.
Lake of Death

Sources:

Manovich, Lev, The Language of New Media (MIT Press, 2001)

Yochai Benkler, The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom (Yale University Press, 2006);

Roger Fidler, Understanding New Media (Pine Forge Press, 1997)

The need for digital language arose from a need for communication across distance.  The construction of railroads (these play an important role throughout this story) led to an increase in social and economic development.  With this increase, it became clear that instantaneous communication would be needed to properly synchronize the moving of goods across these distances.  Enter the telegraph.  Previously, the quickest way for news to break was using various transportation such as the pony express to rush news to the newspaper presses.  With the invention of the telegraph, these were rendered obsolete.

Some of the critics of the telegraph questioned whether people would care about news coming from places they had never been to or cared about.  One such critic wrote that while we now has the means for Maine to communicate with Texas, there was nothing important to communicate between the two states.  This luckily did not stop the telegraph from catching on and there was sense of closeness brought to society as people found themselves connected to widely diverse states across the country.   The next step along this digital path was the telephone.  The transmission of human voice across large distances was of course met with shock and awe.  When people got over their fears and realized this was not some talking machine, the widespread realization of this mediums potential was realized.  Well, by most people at least.

Young Bobby Boucher: [flashback to Bobby's childhood] Mama, when did Ben Franklin invent electricity?

Mama Boucher: That’s nonsense, I invented electricity. Ben Franklin is the Devil!

When radio radio waves were harnessed to give rise to radio broadcasts, the medium (and the message) took yet another leap forward.  Unfortunately, this also gave rise to a necessary (yet annoying!) evil: commercials.  These were used to bring revenue into the growing radio stations, as the nation began to yearn for more forms of communication.  In 1921, over 300,000 people tuned in to listen to a boxing match and the ball was officially rolling.

With today’s Internet age in full bloom, radio seems a bit archaic when thought of as a communication device.  Amateur radio does still exist among hobbyist and enthusiast, and this proves very useful when national disasters or wars interrupt traditional means of communication.  These amateurs that do this despite the domination of news by huge media companies, seem to me to be a cousin of Internet social media users.  They are communicating amongst themselves beneath the notice of ever present news companies.

This amateurism is an important key in today’s digital age.  Benkler states that

“The Internet allows individuals to abandon the idea of the public sphere as primarily constructed of finished statements uttered by a small set of actors socially understood to be “the media” (whether state owned or commercial) and separated from society, and to move toward a set of social practices that see individuals as participating in a debate.”

We are not limited to self musings of the news that “the media” delivers us, we can now go on-line and converse among our peers from all over the planet, discussing news as it happens.  This is truly a  conglomeration of the many pieces that make up digital language.

Yochai Benkler, The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom (Yale University Press, 2006);

Roger Fidler, Understanding New Media (Pine Forge Press, 1997)

2.  Bush discusses records throughout his article, and talks about the possibilities of ways to record vast amounts of information (his “memex” idea in part6).  As more and more records are converted to digital form, the emphasis always seems to be on how vast amounts of information are at our fingertips, and how much space it is saving us….why does there seem to be less of an emphasis on how this is better for the environment to not have as many things printed?

3.  Christensen talks about how Moores Law has affected business models, as customers demand more performance out of products.  How has overshooting allowed companies to change competition?

Those that wish to understand the history of communication in general will be drawn to Standage’s book. Those familiar with the telegraph undoubtedly heard of the demise of the telegram in 2006, and while it is surprising that the telegram survived as long as it did, it is a testament to the history and usefulness of the telegraph. This book is a must read for those wishing to understand communication as it has evolved over the centuries into a commonplace in our society today. The telegraph today lives on in the form of communication techniques such as text messaging, and those that are users of these methods would certainly find this book an interesting read and find relevance in where we are today in the communication world. Those that find reading through books to be a chore will be happy to know that this work was made into a documentary, “How the Victorians Wired the World.”

Standage gives a thorough history of the telegraph, from the basic beginnings of Claude Chappe in France, to the completion of the Trans Atlantic telegraph wire. The story of the telegraph is told piece by piece, with examples and stories giving the reader an imaginative account of what it was like living in those times as the telegraph revolutionized what life was like. The parallels of the devices evolution in Europe and in America are fascinating, and there is a build up in the book as the two sides are eventually connected by the telegraph, and the triumphant feeling and unrealistic hopes that come with the victory. The scientist and opportunistic businessmen in Standage’s book are presented in a way that is easy to imagine and follow as if they were characters in a fictional novel, making the book easy to enjoy.

It is interesting to note the points Standage makes about people at the time predicting the death of newspapers due to this new technology, much like the rise of the internet has sparked similar predictions in modern times.  The newspapers survived the telegraphs rise by adjusting how they presented the news and it actually became quite profitable.  “…breaking news could be reported as it happened, in installments-increasing the suspense and boosting sales” (149).  This made me think of news papers today, particulary in London where there is both a morning and afternoon edition of the paper.

Written by Standage, an Englishman, it would be easy to assume that he would take a pro-European stance in this book, especially given that there were English scientist involved in the race to develop a working telegraph. This is not the case at all. Standage does a great job of remaining neutral while describing the trials and errors that both the European and American inventors went through in designing the telegraph. If one were to pick up the book and start reading, they would not know whether Standage was European or American. This is a testament to Standage being a good author and the realization that the telegraph was truly a global accomplishment, spanning oceans in its evolution from wild idea to communication breakthrough.

“The Victorian Internet” did a fantastic job of being an all-inclusive look into the history of the telegraph, not only dealing with those that were developing it, but also looking into the lives of those that were funding the device and those that were using it. There are several recounts of clueless customers asking to send physical objects through the telegrams, as well as telegram operators that fell in love with one another, despite never meeting face to face. Standage did a great job researching this subject and finding tale after tale of those living in the 19th century using the telegram. The stories of criminals using the telegram for ill gains makes one realize that not much has changed in the fact that as long as there is a communication marvel, there will always be those that wish to use it to thwart authorities and try and make a quick fortune.

Standage’s purpose is educating the reader on just how difficult it was to not only develop a telegraph and have it work across monumental distances, but to gain funding for it and have the right people in charge of regulating it as well. He accomplishes this goal by being thorough in his recounts, and telling the story through the eyes of several different viewpoints. Both supporters and skeptics of the telegraph are quoted and discussed, to give the reader a view of what the telegraph went though in its remarkable journey. In conclusion, “The Victorian Internet” is a valuable learning tool and analysis of the story surrounding the rise of the telegraph.

Standage, Tom. The Victorian Internet. New York: Walker & Company, 1998.