Virtual Communities or Network Society?
"In contrast with the notorious cartoon published by The New Yorker in the pre-history of on-line communication, on the Internet you better make sure that everyone knows that you are a dog, and not a cat, or you will find yourself immersed in the intimate world of cats. Because on the Internet, you are what you say you are, as it is on the basis of this expectation that a network of social interaction is constructed over time."
Read more about this topic: The Internet Galaxy
Famous quotes containing the words virtual, communities and/or network:
“Tragedy dramatizes human life as potentiality and fulfillment. Its virtual future, or Destiny, is therefore quite different from that created in comedy. Comic Destiny is Fortune—what the world will bring, and the man will take or miss, encounter or escape; tragic Destiny is what the man brings, and the world will demand of him. That is his Fate.”
—Susanne K. Langer (1895–1985)
“Culture is the name for what people are interested in, their thoughts, their models, the books they read and the speeches they hear, their table-talk, gossip, controversies, historical sense and scientific training, the values they appreciate, the quality of life they admire. All communities have a culture. It is the climate of their civilization.”
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)
“Of what use, however, is a general certainty that an insect will not walk with his head hindmost, when what you need to know is the play of inward stimulus that sends him hither and thither in a network of possible paths?”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)