User:Laurier Rochon/readingnotes/fernback1/

Jan Fernback > The Individual within the Collective : Virtual Ideology and the Realization of Collective Principles

Notes & quotes

1. Trying to answer some of the many questions pertaining to the mammoth issue of the indivual within a collective and the change in meaning for public spaces once they have been mediated by CMC, Fernback comes up with many analogies offering insight on the many directions these spaces could take in the future. The discourse is very US-centric...
2. 'Cyberspace is a repository for collective cultural memory. It is a reconceived public sphere for social, political, economic, and cultural interaction.'
3. Within cyberspace, consumers become producers and vice versa. Issues of anonymity, accountability and power in cyberspace are once again tackled...Important : 'The exciting sense of possibility permeates cyberspace'.
4. 'Habermas argues that the rational formation of public opinion and public policy is based on a debate within a public sphere of competing ideas'. Does cyberspace really allow this?
5. Cyberspace is both a public and private space - it is practically illimited in flexibility when it comes to scope (micro<-->macro). It any case, it managed to eclipse geography, almost entierly. It also inherits this superficiality which enables one to enter/leave a community quickly, and avoid the confinment often found in small physical communities (i.e. rural towns).
6. What does 'community' mean? Does it designate a physical entity, or an idealogical one? Or both? The author suggests that the conception of a community also evolves alongside society.
7. Rheinngold sees virtual communnities as 'places where people gather for conviviality - these are the places where community is built and sustained'
8. He offers the idea that we build cybercommunities because we are unable to build them elsewhere. They may also serve as building blocks for upcoming physical communities. This obviously begs the question : what does this say about our real/physical world?
9. Fernback : 'what's missing in virtual communities, then, is the sense of individuality that can operate within the collectivity. According to Dewey, the individual's full potential cannot be realized without the context of the community to guide it.'
10. A tension between individuality and collectivity underlies all concepts of community.
11. Rousseau in the social contract : 'when we forget the common good and majorities galvanize around special or private interests, we degenerate as a society into factions where we have fewer civil liberties.'
12. According to Etzioni, communities should speak to us in moral voices. (right after our 'inner voices'?). He thinks this moral voice can ciment moral order within a community, although they should never override morals or grander magnitude (i.e. humanity). Infrasctrure and institutions can also serve to reinforce this sense of morality.
13. I perfer Bellah's definition : They should be a context within which personal identity is formed, a place where fluent self-awareness follows the currents of conversation and contributes to them.
14. About cyberspace : the medium matters (not the message). What people care about is the set of rules understood by all, not the subjects themselves.
15. Does cyberspace simply empowers the already powerful ones? How is it truly democratic?
16. 'questions of access, censorship, libel, copyright, etc. still plague the development of cyberspace' -> I think this needs some nuance
17. Ownership of data on different levels and censorship : ISP, individuals, servers, etc.
18. 'There exists within the CMC community the profound adherence to the notion that freedom of expression is essential to individual liberty and free will'
19. End : '[...] cyberculture and virtual ideology are real constructs from which meaning is derived'.