Cyber-village or anti-social network? We decide! | | Independent Battle of Ideas Blogs

Cyber-village or anti-social network? We decide! | | Independent Battle of Ideas Blogs

Online communities: cyber-village or anti-social network? The short answer is both and neither.

Both, because online ‘communities’ can take the form of cyber villages, facilitating the closeness, shared purpose and humanity of scale that characterizes village communities (and that is so often missing in the large, fast-moving urban and suburban non-communities in which so many of us live) but without the parochialism. They can also morph into anti-social networks or emerge with such a purpose in the first place, ‘opening a window on the world while slamming the door on your neighbour’, as Peter Bradley, the founder of the Speakers’ Corner Trust, once put it to me.

Neither, because, too often, these online clusters, large or small, are not ‘communities’ but mere gatherings – temporary, drifting, ultimately un-cohesive in any meaningful sense – that display none of the constancy or meaningful contact that is the essence both of village (or community) life and of friendship itself. But nor are they, necessarily, anti-social – they are more often ‘social’ but sometimes only in the manner of passing interest; sociable might be a better description. Where are your Facebook Friends when you need them? Probably chatting online to somebody else, comes the sceptic’s response.

We should though be exploring any new or recent phenomenon in terms of its potential, rather than its immediate impact. The immediate impact may have been socially exclusive – a technology evangelically embraced by the young, the tech-savvy and the tech-confident (and there is a fair degree of crossover between these three groups) but one that has risked leaving others, especially parents, the old and the tech-wary behind.