Internet and Online Communities

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Recommended: A research on the history and development of the internet

Internet and Online Communities

The internet was designed initially by the department of defense for their own purposes. But now it has evolved into a complex network not limited to some specific area or region but extending over every part of earth. The Internet now is a form of communication to us. It has become not only a source of information and technology, but it also now houses other different kinds of things. e.g. communities(something we are going to discuss in this paper), educational institutions, online classes etc. In this paper we will look at different aspects of this technology (internet) and analyze some of its impact on our society. In particular we shall see how media interprets the internet and its services. We will compare the article by Howard Rheingold The Heart of the Well to Ourtown.net by Jill Harrington, an article appearing in the Access section of Daily News about online communities. Howard Rheingold in The Heart of the Well and Jill Herrington in Ourtown.net both agree that online communities have become an essential part of our lives today. The article called The Heart of the Well by Rheingold talks about the WELL (Whole Earth Lectronic Link) an online community started in California. In the article he talks about the Well being a center of all kinds of people: parents, professionals, doctors, nurses and others. In the article the author cites a particularly interesting line from Ray Oldenburgs work The Great Good Place. In it Oldenburg affirms that there are three essential places in our lives: the place we live, the place we work and the place we gather for conviviality.

Rheingold in his article argues that internet and online communities have become not only a kind of convivial place wher...

... middle of paper ...

...h is revolutionizing our lives and may prove to be even more successful and efficient for us in the future. Internet is basically a tool in our society. Internet supplies us with a vast number of facilities like online communities and a whole lot of other things. Most of us use internet for one reason or another. For example, I as a student use internet to find information on various kinds of topics ranging from Hitler to NASA. By the same token internet can be useful to virtually everyone in our society. Thus, internet is increasingly becoming part of our lives and it has certainly becoming one of the places where can hang around for conviviality.

Works Cited

Rheingold, Howard. The Heart of the WELL. Composing Cyberspace. Ed. Richard Holeton. San Francisco: McGraw Hill, 1998, 171-180.

Harrington, Jill. Ourtown.net. Access Daily News 25 Feb. 2001: 8-10

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