The night I heard my daughter report to my wife that “Daddy is saying ‘holy moly’ to his computer again,” I realized how much my virtual community had become part of my real life. Although in my daughter’s eyes I appeared to be alone in my home office, in my own mind I was communing with colleagues all around the world. I was arguing politics, making jokes, exchanging tips on raising a daughter or running a small business.
My virtual community, the WELL (Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link), is based in the San Francisco Bay Area , with members all over the world. Since I joined the WELL via my modem in 1985, I’ve spent more than two hours every day connected to the WELL and the larger Internet. My family and my flesh-and-blood community are living evidence that computer networks are not populated with that stereotype, the soulless geek. Sure, there are many lonely and socially inept people who seek some kind of human contact that they lack in the real world. But there are plenty of people who are just like everyone else–we go to work, raise families, attend PTA meetings and baseball games. We rejoice at weddings, cry at funerals, comfort each other in times of trouble, just like people in any real community. When one of us is facing financial trouble, we pass the hat. Barnraising is what we call these on-line events that have impact on the real lives of our members.
Most people who have heard about computer networks have heard tales of teenage vandals who break into computers. Few know about the adults who are using this new communication medium to build something. In an era where the glue that holds together our cultural institutions seems to be dissolving, I fear that mass-media stereotypes of computer nerds might distract attention from a potentially powerful force for social cohesion. In terms of the social tools we need now, aren’t barnraisings at least as important as break-ins?
When I discovered the Parenting conference on the WELL, I understood how human this apparently cold medium of electronic communication can be. The Parenting conference is where people meet to discuss everything from fertility to pediatrics to adolescent angst. Unlike many on-line discussions, which can be bawdy or academic or viciously combative, the Parenting conference always has been a place where people treat each other with decency: we are discussing the most important people in our lives.
The group of regulars who had shared minor injuries and victories over the years became involved in something more serious when one of us, Jay, a radio producer in Massachusetts, started logging into the WELL late at night to report on the progress of his daughter’s surgery. Jay shared his hopes and anxieties with the only community he knew that wasn’t asleep at 3 a.m. We all celebrated together when his daughter recovered.
Then there was Phil, who broke the news that his son had been diagnosed with leukemia. Within minutes, an information and emotional support task force had been assembled, helping make sense of blood counts and test results. Most important, there were other parents there, 24 hours a day, to share what can’t be boiled down into numbers. We rejoiced when Phil’s son went into remission. Whenever I hear people talk about how sad it is that people have to use computers to communicate, I think about Jay and Phil, and the real support they found on line.
More than just cold knowledge or social warmth rewards those who venture into cyber-space and join a virtual community. This new medium, in which every desktop is a printing press and broadcasting station, and every citizen a potential eyewitness reporter, is a political tool of profound import. The power to spread information and misinformation, to use communication media to influence the minds of millions, has previously been reserved for the richest and most powerful. When we talk with each other not as hobbyists or techies or parents, but as citizens, we can make democracy happen. If we don’t lose the freedom to speak as we choose, and if the price of access doesn’t restrict virtual communities to the wealthy, we have the opportunity to build a grass-roots electronic democracy. But first we have to understand the nature of the medium, its pitfalls as well as its benefits.
Virtual communities are not utopias. People need to understand their limitations as well as their benefits. There are dark sides, just as every technology cast cultural shadows. Electronic bulletin-board systems can bring people together, but the computer screen can be a way of controlling relationships, keeping people at a distance. Words on a screen help people communicate without the usual barriers of prejudice based on appearance. That same distancing of real-life identity and on-line persona can lead to cybercads and charlatans who use the medium to swindle others.
People are cruel and rude to each other in real communities– and human nature doesn’t change because the community is mediated by a computer screen. Computer-mediated communications are particularly susceptible to deception. Because the nuances of facial expression, body language and tone of voice are missing, it is also easy to misunderstand intentions, and to be drawn into a heated argument that never would have happened in a face-to-face conversation. Every new communication technology–including the telephone–brings people together in new ways and distances them in other. If we are to make good decisions as a society, about a powerful new communication medium, we must not fail to look at the human element.
