Virtual Communities
(http://faculty.washington.edu/krumme/telcom/virtualcom.html)
People in virtual communities use words on screens to exchange
pleasantries and argue, engage in
intellectual discourse, conduct commerce, exchange knowledge,
share emotional support, make
plans, brainstorm, gossip, feud, fall in love, find friends and
lose them, play games, flirt, create a
little high art and a lot if idle talk. (H.Rheingold,
The Virtual Community, p.3)
Supporting & Related Pages:
Howard Rheingold:
- The Virtual
Community [Introduction and the Remainder of the Book]
- rheingold's brainstorms
Howard Rheingold / Rant Archives / 27 December 1998
Someone I don't know has posted my
recent Wired article about Amish technology practices
The Brainstorms Community is seven
months old. A few hundred people from around the world
communicate about technology, the future, life online, culture, society,
family, history, books, health, home, mind, phun, money and
academiaville....
-
The Virtual Community: Table of Contents
By Howard Rheingold
I put these words out here for the Net without charge
because I want to get as much good information distributed as
possible right now about the nature of computer
communications. But I am also competing with myself...."
- The Well
Internet Sites
Clippings:
Literature:
Everhart, Rodney L., "Creating Virtual Communties," Syllabus 12(8), April 1999, pp.12ff.
["Rodney L. Everhart describes how universities are leveraging their
investment in a network infrastructure to deliver meaningful
communications."]
John Hagel III and Arthur G. Armstrong
Net Gain: Expanding
Markets Through Virtual Communities
[Hardcover - 233 pages (March 1997)
Harvard Business School Press]
...clearly explains "the
untapped opportunities in constructing "Virtual
Communities". Virtual communities are
characterized as sites where users gather to
exchange common interests, ask questions, and
learn about and discuss information. These virutal
communities create a dynamic information source
that is shifting power from the vendors to the
customers."
Valtersson, Maria,
Virtual Communities; Department of Informatics
Umeå University, Sweden
Virtual communities consist of groups of people who have regular contact
with one another in cyberspace. This article deals
with virtual communities that have been formed by people with common
interests, and virtual communities that do not have its
origin in an existing organisation."
Return to Econ & Bus Geog
2000 [econgeog@u.washington.edu]