Finding One’s Own in Cyberspace
This article by MIT doctoral student Amy Bruckman was something that I found to be very insightful. I consider myself a technologically savvy person, and have dabbled in certain forms of online communities such as chat rooms, message boards, and various fora. With this class, I have even managed to enter the blogging community.
Her article was precipitated by a flood of e-mails that she had recived asking about the role women play on the Internet. Some of the e-mails were from women who felt that they were being harassed and disrespected while engaging in some of these online community forms. Bruckman’s response to this was that it was merely an unfortunate circumstance; that these women had the unfortunate experience of trapsing into the wrong rooms.
She then went one to describe how these online communes are formed. While I found this part interesting (and rather simple), I was interested in the similarity to Black and White. Granted I might be reaching, but I don’t think that it is that far of a stretch.
A person cannot find a chat room or forum that hey feel comfortable in, and therefore creates his or her own, and starts to build a new community, or following. The creator, or administrator has the power to regulate admission, can appoint monitors, etc. All these things seem very similar to the goals in Black and White. Make your services available to a following of people, and get that following to be as large as possible.
This is not to say that the people who develop these communities have delusions of grandeur, but I think that it is interesting to look as the possible religious implications associated with this practice.
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