Howard Rheingold's Virtual Community

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Howard Rheingold, who established the definition of the virtual community, touches on his personal experiences in being deeply involved on an emotional level with people he has never personally met before: “The idea of a community accessible only via my computer sounded cold to me at first, but I learned quickly that people can feel passionately about email and computer conferences. I’ve become one of them. I care about these people that I met through my computer, and I care deeply about the future of the medium that enables us to assemble” (273). He considers these people his “family of invisible friends” (Rheingold 273), a group of individuals that he goes out of his way to connect with on a daily basis. The computer is as advanced as it gets; the internet is still in its beginning stages at this point, and already the founding threads of make up the virtual community are being woven together. Aside from the advent of the home telephone, this is the first time that people don’t have to be face to face with each other in order to interact with purpose. What begins as only a small, tightly-knit community can progress into something exponential and all-encompassing as the age of technology thrives. It is the role of not just one community, but many, to develop their own customs and traditions and …show more content…

“The problems of contemporary life” (Rothenbuhler and Shepard ix) include a rise in the divorce rate and the division of the nuclear family, desensitization through the media (television programming, computer and video games, music, etc.), and the instability of employment, all of which and more add up to the “problem of community”. The experience of community, of establishing strong and valuable bonds with others, is one of the key aspects of human life, “found in time or place, in networks or relationships” (Rothenbuhler and Shepard

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