Wahre Gemeinschaften übers Netz?
Gestern erreichte mich dann die Mail einer lettischen Forscherin, die danach fragte, ob ich die Hypothese, dass es keine echten Gemeinschaften, die nur über das Netz organisiert sind, gibt, immer noch aufrecht erhalten würde, und ob ich weitere Argumente dafür oder dagegen gefunden hätte.
Ich denke, meine These stimmt immer noch, und glaube, dass meine Gründe dafür auch Sie interessieren könnten. Deshalb veröffentliche ich hiermit die Antwort auf diese Mail. Schade nur, dass das Kommentarsystem immer noch nicht funktioniert, Ihre Meinung hätte mich sehr interessiert. Mailen Sie sie mir doch.
Selbst etwas bizarre
Freunde treffen sich besser in real life ...
„Dear XXX,
thank you very much for your mail and the interest in
my old article. I will gladly give you an answer to
your question.
But first let me point out that I dropped out of
active research in things online by the turn of the
century. Nowadays I work mostly in ethics and in
literary sciences. So don´t expect a good knowledge
of recent research literature.
But I am very much living with and in social networks
as Facebook, Xing and so on, so I do have a good
practical knowledge. And from this viewpoint, I think
that my thesis from 13 years ago still holds true in
essence. There are no virtual communities which do
have the same quality with regard to parameters like
trust, friendship and tolerance with those in real
life.
Back then I certainly underestimated the role the
Internet would play in every people´s life by the end
of the first decennial of the new millennium. But as
for my thesis this very important role of the Net is
quite interesting, since nowadays there are millions
of people which have connections via net in two ways.
First there are the connections with people with
which they are acquainted, even befriended in real
life, and second there are the people you only know
by wire. The latter may be blokes with which you are
playing online games or customers and employees which
with you commute. And I still guess that a close
relationship is almost always - mind, there might be
exceptions, but I guess they are seldom - possible
only with people you have got to know in RL.
The Net is very well adapted to keep your personal
network close together. Especially those seemingly
meaningless textbits which you post on Twitter and
Facebook often are very meaningful to people which
know you. So you keep everyone important in your life
informed about your general status. (Though there are
people saying that most postings are strategically
and do not tell what really is going on in the psyche
of the poster - but that does not conform with my
observations.) But my guess is, that the meaning of
your tidbits of information are meaningful only to
people you know from RL, and also that these tidbits
do interest only the people you know from RL, but not
the occasional gaming-partner or customer.
There lies a whole world of meaning behind a Tweet
like - let me pick one randomly from my current
Tweetdeck-screen - this: "mmmmm Hubby's going to
surprise us with cinnamon rolls (even a sugar-free
one for me, lol) He spoils us :-P". What do you make
of it without knowing this guy? And wouldn´t you
smile to your self and have a good feeling about your
friend if you knew her, and see that she obviously
expects a good afternoon? There is very much meaning
in this white noise of the Net, but only if you care,
and you cannot really care for the 501 anonymous
members of your gang in Mafia Wars or the totally
virtual neighbours in Farmville.
I basically did not come up with additional
arguments, but with additional observation, though
only on a strictly subjective and personal scale. If
anyone would want to test my old hypotheses, now
would be the time and I would advise to inquire into
the two different groups of online-acquaintances as a
measure for testing and observation.
Hope that helped, good luck with your work.
All the best,
Frank“