Resumo de Cyber Society

Cyber Society claims to be the first volume to
focus on the construction, maintenance, and mediation of community in
electronic networks and computer-mediated communication. Jones'' introduction,
Understanding Community in the Information Age, is a survey of some of the
broad questions raised by such communities (including whether they should be
called communities at all).
Given the limited amount of work that has been done in the field, however,
perhaps this eclecticism is a good sign rather than a bad one ? presentation of
a single theoretical framework with claims that it was capable of answering all
the questions would have been a lot more worrying! Jones is to be commended for
having compiled this volume, anyway.

The first three papers don''t connect directly to the ostensible topic of the
volume, being about individual activities such as computer games rather than
about society or community. Kramarae''s A Backstage Critique of Virtual Reality
is a feminist critique of some of the claims made on behalf of virtual reality.
While it is on the polemical side and, in my opinion, sometimes stresses minor
issues while overlooking more important ones, it is a valuable warning about
some of the hidden dangers often overlooked in uncritical euphoria about
technological possibilities.Nintendo and New World Travel Writing: A Dialogue (Fuller and Jenkins) is a
rather weird attempt to draw a parallel between the early narratives of North
American colonization and exploration and Nintendo games. While both subjects
are interesting, the connection between them is really too tenuous to provide a
clear focus for the paper. Also, I can''t see the connection with construction
of community in electronic networks: I know nothing about Nintendo games, but
everything in this essay suggests they are single-player. The same could be
said of Friedman''s Making Sense of Software: Computer Games and Interactive
Textuality, which presents a theory of computer games which is applicable to
simulations as well as to adventure games. I really liked this paper, however:
Friedman argues convincingly for the significance of computer games without
building complex theoretical edifices around the idea.

Standards of Conduct on Usenet constructs a
typology of conduct-correcting episodes in five newsgroups, based on analysis
of all posts to them over a period of weeks. This is used to explore the
origins of codes of conduct (formal and informal) in Usenet, and is set in the
light of broader questions, such as whether newsgroups can really be considered
communities. I''m dubious about the deliberate selection of newsgroups with low cross
posting ratios on the grounds that these are the best candidates for group
identification and cohesiveness (my experience is that interactions and
boundaries between groups play a significant role in defining their identity),
but that''s a minor quibble. The subject is one that is endlessly debated in
Usenet newsgroups themselves, and this paper will interest anyone after a well
thought-out comparative perspective on it.

I''m a bit unsure about the most abstract part of MacKinnon''s Searching for
the Leviathan in Usenet, a parallel between Hobbes'' Leviathan and censorship or
moderation in Usenet. The paper isn''t heavily dependent on this, however, and
MacKinnon uses Hobbes'' ideas as the basis for an insightful exploration of the
nature of participation in Usenet. The focus is on the idea of personae and on
the presence of coercion or acceptance of constraints on behavior (at a more
abstract level than in the preceding paper); the approach is theoretical but
not excessively abstract, and nicely complements the other papers on Usenet in
the volume.

Baym''s The Emergence of Community in Computer-Mediated Communication and
Reid''s Virtual Worlds: Culture and Imagination are about the construction of
communities based on computer-medicritical of
older work on CMC which was dismissive of its ability to support social
interaction. Baym focuses on Usenet (and in particular the newsgroup
rec.arts.tv.soaps) and Reid on MUDs, and both provide excellent introductions
to their subjects (with which they have clearly had extensive first-hand
experience). Despite the limitations of space, they also manage to outline some
of the important theoretical issues involved.

Some very poor articles on the Internet have been produced by journalists,
but bad academic writing on the subject has an awfulness all of its own. Aycock
and Buchignani''s The Email Murders ? a study of the Usenet discussion centered
on the Fabrikant affair? may be the single worst piece of work on Usenet I have
seen. Among other failings, it is poorly researched (Kehoe''s Zen and the
Art of the Internet is its only source for information about Usenet, which
is described as part of the Internet), makes no attempt to identify with its
subjects (if any ethnic group were treated in such a patronizing
fashion there would be an outcry), and has a poorly concealed agenda of its own
(there are repeated gibes at Usenet posters for being empiricist and
scientific, although the authors themselves assume a position of complete
detachment). If this is postmodern ethnography (and it claims to be), then so
much the worse for postmodern ethnography.

Cyber Society is an attractively presented volume (though the mail,
news, MUD and IRC quotes really should have been in a mono-spaced font).
Whether it is worth reading will depend on your interests: I would recommend
the paper by Friedman as an introduction to computer games and the papers by
McLaughlin et al., MacKinnon, Baym and Reid will be obligatory reading for
anyone interested in net anthropology (the full theses on which the Reid and
MacKinnon papers are based are available on-line).

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