The Virtual Community, revised edition: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier

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MIT Press, Oct 23, 2000 - Computers - 480 pages
Howard Rheingold tours the "virtual community" of online networking.

Howard Rheingold has been called the First Citizen of the Internet. In this book he tours the "virtual community" of online networking. He describes a community that is as real and as much a mixed bag as any physical community—one where people talk, argue, seek information, organize politically, fall in love, and dupe others. At the same time that he tells moving stories about people who have received online emotional support during devastating illnesses, he acknowledges a darker side to people's behavior in cyberspace. Indeed, contends Rheingold, people relate to each other online much the same as they do in physical communities. Originally published in 1993, The Virtual Community is more timely than ever. This edition contains a new chapter, in which the author revisits his ideas about online social communication now that so much more of the world's population is wired. It also contains an extended bibliography.

 

Contents

The Heart of the WELL
1
Daily Life in Cyberspace How the Computerized Counterculture Built a New Kind of Place
25
Visionaries and Convergences The Accidental History of the Net
57
Grassroots Groupminds
109
MultiUser Dungeons and Alternate Identities
149
Realtime Tribes
181
Japan and the Net
205
Telematique and Messageries Roses A Tale of Two Virtual Communities
231
Electronic Frontiers and Online Activists
255
Disinformocracy
295
Rethinking Virtual Communities
323
Afterword 1994
393
Bibliography
405
Index
427
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About the author (2000)

Howard Rheingold, an influential writer and thinker on social media, is the author of Tools for Thought: The History and Future of Mind-Expanding Technology, The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier (both published by the MIT Press), and Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution.

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