From kragen@dnaco.net Mon Sep 14 15:10:59 1998 Date: Mon, 14 Sep 1998 15:10:58 -0400 (EDT) From: Kragen To: Dan Ancona cc: rebecalist@bossanova.com Subject: Re: subcultures & cmc (was Re: Clinton and Staaarrgghh!) In-Reply-To: <3.0.32.19980914112832.00ffba40@mail.intervista.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-Keywords: X-UID: 1981 Status: O X-Status: On Mon, 14 Sep 1998, Dan Ancona wrote: > . . . all > these people are doing this tribal/band thing (I recoil from using "tribal" > to describe this phenomenon, but I'm not sure why and it's the closest > approximation I can think of) but we're all pretty isolated at the same > time. But CMC definitely mitigates that problem, or at least it *could*. In a sense, I think it's a product of CMC. When communities become more intentional and less accidental, it's not surprising that most people choose people more like them over people more nearby. Our accidental geographical tribes are replaced by intentional tribes, based on what we have in common. This has the laudable effect of bringing people together across national lines, making jingoism and nationalism less attractive, but it also means we don't have to deal with the people right under our nose to get our social needs met -- or not to the same extent. We don't have to spend as much time dealing with people who disagree with us. The old media is up in arms about what this is doing to pedophiles -- they become able to construct a social matrix in which pedophilia is accepted and encouraged, and don't need to spend as much time dealing with people who have the mainstream view that it's destructive to the children who are raped. > Mostly right now I think it's mostly being used to do internal group wiring > with some inter-group discussion, but I'm wondering what's going to happen > when we start using it even more to wire more disparate groups together. > It's one of those situations where I think the current web, given it's > limited ability to show relationships between chunks of information, really > has a long way to go but will eventually be an incredibly powerful tool. I'm interested to hear more of your vision. Kragen (who didn't burn at Burning Man) -- Kragen Sitaker The sages do not believe that making no mistakes is a blessing. They believe, rather, that the great virtue of man lies in his ability to correct his mistakes and continually make a new man of himself. -- Wang Yang-Ming