Virtual Cultures....define it, encase it - just explain it?

Virtual Communities...

Howard Rheingold was the first to notice and define virtual communities as ‘social aggregations’; individuals participating in communication during a length of time in which relationships formed with others within the cyberspace context (Flew, 2004, p.2) Whereas Turkle (quoted by Flew, 2004, p.3) considers virtual communities as a providence of a “constructive and potentially liberatory space through which ‘the obese can become slender, the beautiful plain, the nerdy sophisticated”.

Virtual communities have evolved into communicative networks within new applications of the internet; predominantly through social interaction (Spurgeon, 2006, May 31). Which ever way you choose to define virtual communities, it boils down to three words - Social Interaction Online. So by these three words I participate in a virtual community via Facebook. Whilst I have not risen to the next level of interaction, produsage, I do enjoy viewing others uploads. The communities provide a plato, for social and intellectual interaction, that is geographically, socially and culturally boundaryless.

Nelson Mandela once said that our greatest fear is not that we are inadaquate. Our greatest fear is that we are more powerful than measure. If we take the concept of virtual cultures and apply it to this theory, then what can we expect next? Where socialising once only occured face to face, over dinner, attending balls, sports teams and school, virtual communities now enable one to sit at home, invent the identity they want to be and socialise with anyone, at anytime, anywhere on the globe. And more to the point, if technology is still evolving, and scientists and IT professionals, more commonly known as nerds, are inventing cutting edge systems...how long until technology invades our bodies and thoughts are downloaded to a computer through a mere cable? Where does the line get drawn and how far is too far? My fear is that virtual communities will not only exist in the depths of computers, but life as we know it, will transform into a virtual system.

Flew acknowledges Pierre Levy (1997) in his argument that virtual communities are situated on a continuum between organic relationships established through ‘face to face’ interaction and between organised groups where identities are far more ‘imagined’ and mediated through communication technologies. However for the moment, there seems a even balance between the 'real world' and 'virtual world'. When idenities begin to blur, and privacy is breeched, then the concept of virtual communities will need to be re-assessed and just like everything else, regulated. But, right now, as Turke states the "internet is another element of computer culture that has contributed to thinking about identity as multiplicity. On it, people are able to build a self by cycling through many selves, (Creed, 2003, p.193).”

References

Creed, B. 2003. The Global Self and the New Reality. In Media Matrix: Sexing the new reality. Crows Nest: Allen and Unwin

Flew, T. 2004. Virtual Cultures. In New Media: An Introduction, ed 2. Melbourne: Oxford University Press.

Jenkins, H. Quentin Tarantino’s Star Wars? In Digital Cinema, Media Convergence and Participatory Culture.