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Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

Online communities -what's worth reading?

Jack Vincennes

10:30 / 03.03.04

As the title says. I'm interested in reading more about online communities, particularly the way online communities mirror or don't mirror (by choice or otherwise), 'traditional' communities. I've searched vague terms on amazon but everything that's been returned seems to be about how one should go about building a community, rather than the theory behind them. Does anyone know of any interesting books on theory that have been written about this?

All of this seems to be amazingly vague, mainly because I'm not entirely sure how much, or what at all, there is on this subject. Really, I'm hoping that there's some kind of anthropology type text about the dynamics within the communities -but essentially, any resources at all would be welcome!

Baz Auckland

16:19 / 03.03.04

The only book I've seen on online communities is Cyberville by Stacey Horn. She's the Tom of The Echo Online Community in NYC... it's quite old now, but it details the start up, life and on-board drama of Echo.

EvskiG

16:30 / 03.03.04

Also The Virtual Community, by Howard Rheingold. A bit dated, but a real classic of the genre.

ONLY NICE THINGS

20:52 / 03.03.04

I found Rheingold a bit rusty - certainly comprehensive, but somehow unsatisfying - possibly because the technology he is describing is so clunky. Worth reading, though.

Dibbell's My Tiny Life is interesting - it's a close look at LambdaMOO. The same themes are picked up in parts of The War of Desire and Technology by Rosanna Stone, which has an interesting article on the Sanford Lewin case. Oh, and JC Herz The Internet, which I found rather wanky but had some interesting bits on some of the early community projects.

Jack Vincennes

10:13 / 12.03.04

Thanks for the recommendations -I found Cyberville second hand really easily, so I've been reading that. Enjoying what she writes about the problems she faced trying to run the community, but every now and then her writing style turns into that of "Carrie" from Sex And The City. The ideas in it about why her community works are interesting, partly because they're the exact opposite of everything else I've read about this (specifically, she think that it's important that the entire community live relatively close to each other)

My Tiny Life was one of the books I was thinking of when I started this thread. It seems to be the closest to an 'ethnography' of this kind of thing, Dibbell never seems to be too emotionally involved with the MOO no matter how much time he spends there. He doesn't seem to be particularly excited by the technology either, which seems to be quite unusual in such books.

The Strobe

13:57 / 12.03.04

I think that's partly because Dibble is over being excited by the technology. It's cool and interesting but he's more interested in the people, and, in writing an ethnography, he doesn't want his writing to be bogged down by techevangelising.

I'm not convinced he's not a little excited, given his current interests and writings. He clearly knows that once you've got over the "woo, technology!" phase, you need to write about the interesting stuff underneath to make an impact. He's just making sure he's heavy on content and light on fluff. I think.

diz

14:58 / 12.03.04

Also The Virtual Community, by Howard Rheingold. A bit dated, but a real classic of the genre.

also by Rheingold is the more recent Smart Mobs, which isn't strictly restricted to online messageboard type communities, but is definietely good for what you're looking for. there's a Smart Mobs blog/community/thing here.

there's a fair bit on online community making in Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software, which isn't a bad read in general either.

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