Bell and Bauman have different views about online communities and how they impact society. This is not just a debate between both of them, but between millions of online users and their counterparts. My stand here is, as mentioned in DTC 475, that technology is subjective. We will always have those who believe that technology is improving our lives and we will always have those who will believe that technology is taking down the essence of personal interaction and communication. My question here is, why worry about fighting against each other and why can’t we all accept that everyone is different? What works for some does not work for others, so why can’t we all start respecting each other and our choices?
I, personally, love online communities or should I say, that I love the way technology allows me to communicate with other people whenever I want. For some, it could be true that “virtual communities lack the durability and intensity of RL communities” but I keep insisting that this argument is subjective (Bell 255). For me, online communities are just like phones, they help me stay connected with whomever I want and whenever I want. My own “online community” does not harm the durability and intensity of my RL community, if fact, it enhances my RL and I’ll tell you why…
I met my husband on an online community of music lovers two years ago and we got married this summer. My relationship with my partner was not less durable or less intense as that of any other couple that met at a coffee shop or somewhere else. In fact, I could even argue that my relationship with my partner and the distance between us (I live in Washington, he lives in Venezuela) forced us to push even harder and made us look beyond the body and into the soul. Our relationship (although sustained via online interfaces) made my RL more real, but what made it a relationship was not the online communities, but what each of us decided to put in, such as patience, love, trust, respect and understanding.
All of the online communities to whom my partner and I belong to did not withdraw us from our RL taking us into a virtual word, they did not acted as “coat peg” where we could “hang our interests or obsessions, our enthusiasms or worries,” we just used them to communicate as you would use a phone or the post office (Bell 257).
So like I said in the beginning, technology is subjective, what works for me enhancing my real life, might be harming or might be withdrawing someone from the “real life” and into the virtual life. So how about we all stop looking into other’s lives and instead learn to look at ourselves, like Bell concluded in his writing, jut “stop worrying!” and “get over it!” let people make their own choices (Bell 261).
Works Cited:
Bell, David. "Webs as Pegs." The Cybercultures Reader. David Bell and Barbara M Kennedy. New York: Routledge, 2000. Print.
Part Two: Choosing 3 Online Sites
To compare similar websites and their representation strategies I would like to compare MySpace and Facebook because there is a big battle between both of them on who attracts and keeps more members active (or at least I believe) and I personally see that MySpace is starting to resemble Facebook in a lot of ways, so I would like to see them “face to face”. For the third website, I would like to use Deezer, just because I see Deezer as a loner who does his own thing, his own way. But I’ll need to think further about using it, because both MySpace and Facebook are just social sites, while Deezer is a social site where you meet people but not based on profiles but on music tastes.
I like where you are going with this but when you ask "What works for some does not work for others, so why can’t we all start respecting each other and our choices?" I have gotta say--because choices never exist in isolation, right? They always have effects on other choices.
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