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Rheingold Discussion (#805)

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Rheingold Discussion

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FortDa says,	psyko says,
"well, let's start with Rheingold, since he is, or has been such a loud voice in virtual community stuff for a while" "by the way, _Wired_ magazine declared the WELL the most influential service"	"it was a description of the history of the Well" "my first introduction to that place"
nods	asks, "yes - and that is still relevant for the development of the Net?" asks, "or just history?"
"not really...but i think it puts a particular perspective on the utopic euphoria that surrounds discussion of internet" "in some circles"	asks, "ok - are there many places like that?"
thinks that the link between 60s student activism and Rheingold's vision of the internet as a promising social space is an important point to make "there's this attempt by Rheingold to portray the WELL as a 'natural' extension of the Hog Farm and the Merry Pranksters."	"the Hog Farm is unknown for me"
"one of the agrarian communes that sprung up in the late sixties, early 70s" "and to some degree, the merry pranksters==that first generation of hackers"	asks, "i find Rheingold a bit euphoric - but are Poster's thoughts influenced by him?" "and the Well"
"it's not so much, for me, that the WELL exists as some sort of continuation, but rather, that everything that Rheingold says concerning "the electronic agora" is shaped by that context" "no, Poster is not influenced by Rheingold..."	asks, "is "electronic agora" Rheingold's concept?"
"but Poster is writing in an environment in which Rheingold has set the tone for one aspect of the internet community debate" nods, as far as I know, Rheingold gets credit for saying "electronic agora" first	"ok - a nice concept"
"but one directly connected to a particular conception of liberation politics and social resistance"	asks, "are the sixties still living?"
"Rheingold would say so. On p. 48 of the published version:" [quote] "Personal computers and the PC industry were created by young iconoclasts who had seen the LSD revolution fizzle, the political revolution fail. Computers for the people was the latest battle in the same campaign"	"ok - it is interesting that they went from the farm to the Internet"
"but just have a look at Bill Gates empire and MSN..."	asks, "and how did they get the competence to do that?"
asks, "they==who?" asks, "ah, the people like Brilliant?"	asks, "the people on the farm?"
"they're Rheingold's 'visionaries'" thinks that Poster stands in nice counterpoint to Rheingold... "in that Rheingold seems to place a 60s counterculture online by way of a one-to-one transfer" "a transposition of sorts" "Poster asks for an examination of how new relations might emerge" sees a fundamental difference in how space is conceived in these two approaches	asks, "and this happened on the west-coast?"
nods "the WELL is SF based"	asks, "ok - was Poster on the farm too?"
lafs, I don't think so "he might have been an undergad at the time tho. He, I think, is far more steeped in academic Marxism, and to some degree, has written himself into a post-Marxist position." "he's done a book on Baudrillard, for example"	asks, "why is Marxism so important and influential in US?"
asks, "you think just in US academia?"	nods
thinks that there was a strong academic influence in England as well, perhaps far stronger shurgs	"all (most of) the old Marxi's are now social-democrats in Norway" "perhaps because of the welfare-state"
nods	asks, "what do you think is most important in Poster's paper?"
thinks that his assertion of a restructured subject is pretty central	"i agree that virtual space is very interesting for the understanding of the constitution of subjectivity"
smirks decentered subject as central ;>	asks, "what does he really says about the subject?"
"what I'm personally interested in is the degree to which online space becomes a kind of u-topia for Poster too"	"Poster says that public sphere as a face-to-face relation is over"
"I see most folks writing on virtual community as heading down this path to some degree" has written a bit on this point via both Baudrillard and deleuze+guattari "what I mean is the degree to which online space offers a "better" social arrangement" "be that 'better' from an Enlightenment or a postmodern perspective"	asks, "interesting - where do i find your writings?"
has been hesitating to put the deleuze+guattari piece online since it's still going through the contract stage	"Poster is very precise about history of the concept like democracy - public sphere etc."
"but the Baudrillard piece is at: http://www.dc.peachnet.edu/~mnunes/jbnet.html"	nods "ok"
"there's also some stuff I wrote in response to the rape in cyberspace piece a few years back:"	"i have read that article - very good"
asks, "my piece or the dibble piece?" "http://www.dc.peachnet.edu/~mnunes/pres_95.html"	"thanks "
"I want to try to think about the relation between online 'space' and social space/public space in general" "both Rheingold and Poster have something to say (or at least have assumed something) about this relation"	"ok "
"for Rheingold it's the idea that online life signified the return of the agorae, social spaces that were eclipsed by malls and suburbia" "Poster doesn't assume as much and notes that online space could easily be just another kind of mall..."	nods
"but he does comment on the way in which social space has become mediated" "suggesting that the media have become our public space"	nods
"rather than collapsing our discussion onto online space itself, I'm wondering if we could, over the next w