Community in the Digital Age

Philosophy and Practice

Contributions by Phillip E. Agre, Maria Bakardjieva, Bruce Bimber, Albert Borgmann The University of Montana, Hubert Dreyfus, Amitai Etzioni professor, George Washington University; founder of the Society for the Adv, Andrew Feenberg, Tetsuji Iseda, Diane Elizabeth Johnson, Richard Kahn, Douglas Kellner UCLA; author of Media Culture and Media Spectacle and the Crisis of Democra, Yumiko Nara, Mark Poster, Douglas Schuler, Leslie Regan Shade, Sherry Turkle Edited by Andrew Feenberg, Darin Barney McGill University

Publication date:

19 July 2004

Length of book:

336 pages

Publisher

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Dimensions:

154x229mm
9x6"

ISBN-13: 9780742529595

Is the Internet the key to a reinvigorated public life? Or will it fragment society by enabling citizens to associate only with like-minded others? Online community has provided social researchers with insights into our evolving social life. As suburbanization and the breakdown of the extended family and neighborhood isolate individuals more and more, the Internet appears as a possible source for reconnection. Are virtual communities "real" enough to support the kind of personal commitment and growth we associate with community life, or are they fragile and ultimately unsatisfying substitutes for human interaction? Community in the Digital Age features the latest, most challenging work in an important and fast-changing field, providing a forum for some of the leading North American social scientists and philosophers concerned with the social and political implications of this new technology. Their provocative arguments touch on all sides of the debate surrounding the Internet, community, and democracy.

Chapter 1 Preface
Chapter 3 1 Consumers or Citizens? The Online Community Debate
Part 4 Part I: The Question of Community and Digital Technology
Chapter 5 2 The Vanishing Table, or Community in a World That is No World
Chapter 6 3 Is the Internet the Solution to the Problem of Community?
Chapter 7 4 Nihilism on the Information Highway: Anonymity versus commitment in the Present Age
Chapter 8 5 Workers as Cyborgs: Labor and Networked Computers
Chapter 9 6 Our Split Screens
Part 10 Part II Observing Online Communities
Chapter 11 7 Virtual Togetherness: An Everyday Life Perspective
Chapter 12 8 Gender and the Commodification of Community: Women.com and gURL.com
Chapter 13 9 Ethics on the Internet: A Comparative Study of Japan, the United States, and Singapore
Part 14 Part III The Democratic Potential of the Internet
Chapter 15 10 Virtually Democratic: Online Communities and Internet Activism
Chapter 16 11 The Practical Republic: Social Skills and the Progress of Citizenship
Chapter 17 12 On Virtual, Democratic Communities
Chapter 18 13 The Internet and Political Transformation Revisited
Chapter 19 14 Towards Civic Intelligence: Building a New Sociotechnological Infrastructure

A stimulating contribution from many of the world's leading commentators to the controversies surrounding the social, political, and cultural importance of online community networks.