Community in the Digital Age Philosophy and Practice

by Feenberg, Andrew; Barney, Darin; Agre, Phillip E.; Bakardjieva, Maria; Bimber, Bruce; Borgmann, Albert; Dreyfus, Hubert; Etzioni, Amitai; Feenberg, Andrew; Iseda, Tetsuji; Johnson, Diane Elizabeth; Kahn, Richard; Kellner, Douglas; Nara, Yumiko; Poster, Ma

• ISBN13: 9780742529595
• ISBN10: 0742529592
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-07-19
• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Summary

Community in the Digital Age features the latest, most challenging work in an important and fast-changing field, providing a forum for some of the leading North American social scientists and philosophers concerned with the social and political implications of this new technology. Their provocative arguments touch on all sides of the debate surrounding the Internet, community, and democracy.

Table of Contents

Preface	vii
1 Consumers or Citizens? The Online Community Debate	1	(30)
Andrew Feenherg and Maria Bakardjieva
Part I: The Question of Community and Digital Technology
2 The Vanishing Table, Or Community in a World That Is No World	31	(22)
Darin Barney
3 Is the Internet the Solution to the Problem of Community?	53	(16)
Albert Borgmann
4 Nihilism on the Information Highway: Anonymity versus Commitment in the Present Age	69	(14)
Hubert Dreyfus
5 Workers as Cyborgs: Labor and Networked Computers	83	(18)
Mark Poster
6 Our Split Screens	101	(20)
Sherry Turkle
Part II: Observing Online Communities
7 Virtual Togetherness: An Everyday Life Perspective	121	(22)
Maria Bakardjieva
8 Gender and the Commodification of Community: Women.com and gURL.com	143	(18)
Leslie Regan Shade
9 Ethics on the Internet: A Comparative Study of Japan, the United States, and Singapore	161
Yumiko Nara and Tetsuji Iseda
Part III: The Democratic Potential of the Internet
10 Virtually Democratic: Online Communities and Internet Activism	183	(18)
Richard Kahn and Douglas Kellner
11 The Practical Republic: Social Skills and the Progress of Citizenship	201	(24)
Philip E. Agre
12 On Virtual, Democratic Communities	225	(14)
Amitai Etzioni
13 The Internet and Political Transformation Revisited	239	(24)
Diane Johnson and Bruce Bimher
14 Toward Civic Intelligence: Building a New Sociotechnological Infrastructure	263	(24)
Douglas Schuler
Index	287	(4)
List of Contributors	291