The wired neighborhood /

Doheny-Farina, Stephen.

The wired neighborhood / Wired neighbourhood Stephen Doheny-Farina. - xv, 224 pages ; 22 cm

Includes bibliographical references (pages 203-220) and index.

The Immersions: A Preface -- Real Cold, Simulated Heat: Virtual Reality at the Roxy -- Immersive Virtualists and Wired Communitarians -- Virtual Vermont: The Rise of the Global and the Decline of the Local -- Seeking Public Space in a Virtual World -- Seeking Public Space on the Internet -- Telecommuting -- Default Equals Offline -- Virtual Schools -- The Communitarian Vision -- Challenges to Community Networks -- Reality versus the Communitarian Ideal -- "Today's Next Big Something" -- Fight the Good Fight -- List of Civic Organizations -- Notes -- Index. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

Are communication technologies ushering in a wondrous new age of computer networks that connect people into worldwide virtual communities of like-minded individuals? Or are global computer networks isolating us from real relationships and from our society, as we stare into a screen instead of interacting face to face? In this eloquent and thoughtful book, Stephen Doheny-Farina explores the nature of cyberspace and the increasing virtualization of everyday life. He occupies a middle ground between these two extreme views of the net, arguing that electronic neighborhoods should be less important than geophysical neighborhoods in all their integrity, and that we must use the new technologies not to escape from our troubled communities but to reinvigorate them. Doheny-Farina offers a critical perspective on virtual reality and its social impact, showing us how people meet and converse on the net, how they teach and learn, and how they establish workplaces that can accompany them wherever they go. Along the way he reveals the advantages and hazards of making the computer the center of our public and private lives. Doheny-Farina argues that once we begin to divorce ourselves from geographic place and start investing ourselves in virtual communities, we further the dissolution of our real, dying communities. He speaks out in favor of a movement called civic networking, which promotes the proliferation of networks that originate locally to organize community information and culture and to foster pride in and responsibility to our neighborhoods.

0300067658 9780300067651 0300074344 9780300074345

96012241


Information superhighway--Social aspects
Internet--Social aspects.
Virtual reality--Social aspects

HE7568 / .D64 1996

303.4834

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