Proximate Communities

Hey guys,

Finally decided to write again because I was annoyed about losing my other post. Today we had our last online forum chat and it didn't seem to go as well as the first one last week. I think a lot of people had said as much as they could think of in the first chat.

Collective Interaction - place-based
Well in the proximate community discussion we spoke about the issue of Urban Villages and then got onto the weird topic of virtual pets. I found a really cute website that alows audiences to interact with their own virtual pet and personalise the features. The link is http://www.neopets.com/addpet.phtml?view=all and it looks very Japanese. I also has a look at the nintendo dogs game as everyone was talking about it http://www.kidzworld.com/site/p5944.htm looks very good, I can see why there was discussion.

Collective Interaction - geographically dispersed
Looking at Putnam and Pew's views it is obvious there is a direct disagreement when discussing the impact of technology upon society. Robert Putnam holds a very conservative view as he focuses his discussion upon the emergence of the selfish individual who doesn't dance with his/her partner. However Pew argues that businesses can use vitual communities to make more profit on line so this is good for society. He also argues that technology has also given rise to interaction between cross-relational and cross-generational individuals online.

Networked Interaction - geographically dispersed
Peer-to-peer communication for example online communities such as www.Hi5.com and www.myspace.com . These sites allow for individuals to create a network of individuals with the same interests and common ground so they can for friendships and relations. The act of social networking - e.g. friendstar.com

Network Interaction - place based
Discussion here discussed examples such as the mobile telephone where an individual would usually answer the home phone with their name but because the mobile is a personal device you no longer need to as most individuals who call know it is your phone. (Personalised social network) This is person-to-person instead of peer-to-peer. Here you can interact in many different activities while being in the one place. Lecture ecample: you can lecture, recieve a text message and do this while downloading your emails at the same time seamlessly.

Well that is my basic overview of the lecture material and how I interpreted it. I though this lecture was one of the most interesting this semester. Cheers, I'll try blog again soon.