External links
- The Virtual Community (Text of book on the author's site)
 | This article about a sociology-related book is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
The Virtual Community is a 1993 book about virtual communities by Howard Rheingold, a member of the early network system The WELL. A second edition, with a new concluding chapter, was published in 2000 by MIT Press.
The book's discussion ranges from Rheingold's adventures on The WELL, computer-mediated communication and social groups and information science. Technologies cited include Usenet, MUDs (multi-user dungeons) and their derivatives MUSHes and MOOs, Internet Relay Chat (IRC), chat rooms, and electronic mailing lists. Rheingold also points out the potential benefits for personal psychological well-being, as well as for society at large, of belonging to a virtual community.
| | This article about a sociology-related book is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
The term chat room, or chatroom, is primarily used to describe any form of synchronous conferencing, occasionally even asynchronous conferencing. The term can thus mean any technology ranging from real-time online chat and online interaction with strangers to fully immersive graphical social environments.
Online chat may refer to any kind of communication over the Internet that offers a real-time transmission of text messages from sender to receiver. Chat messages are generally short in order to enable other participants to respond quickly. Thereby, a feeling similar to a spoken conversation is created, which distinguishes chatting from other text-based online communication forms such as Internet forums and email. Online chat may address point-to-point communications as well as multicast communications from one sender to many receivers and voice and video chat, or may be a feature of a web conferencing service.
A virtual community is a social network of individuals who interact through specific social media, potentially crossing geographical and political boundaries in order to pursue mutual interests or goals. Some of the most pervasive virtual communities are online communities operating under social networking services.
Howard Rheingold is an American critic, writer, and teacher, known for his specialties on the cultural, social and political implications of modern communication media such as the Internet, mobile telephony and virtual communities.
Internet culture, or cyberculture, is a culture that has emerged, or is emerging, from the use of computer networks for communication, entertainment, and business. Internet culture is also the study of various social phenomena associated with the Internet and other new forms of the network communication. Examples of these new forms of network communication include, online communities, online multi-player gaming, wearable computing, social gaming, social media, mobile apps, augmented reality, and texting as well as issues related to identity, privacy, and network formation.
Artificial reality is a book series by Myron W. Krueger about interactive immersive environments, based on video recognition techniques, that put a user in full, unencumbered contact with the digital world. He started this work in the late 1960s and is considered to be a key figure in the early innovation of virtual reality. Artificial Reality was published in 1983 and updated in Artificial Reality II in 1991.
Virtual sex is sexual activity where two or more people - or one person and a virtual character - gather together via some form of communications equipment to arouse each other by transmitting sexually explicit messages. Virtual sex describes the phenomenon, no matter the communications equipment used.
In computing, an avatar is the graphical representation of the user or the user's alter ego or character. An icon or figure representing a particular person in a video game, Internet forum, etc. It may take either a three-dimensional form, as in games or virtual worlds, or a two-dimensional form as an icon in Internet forums and other online communities. Avatar images have also been referred to as "picons" in the past, though the usage of this term is uncommon now. It can also refer to a text construct found on early systems such as MUDs. The term "avatar" can also refer to the personality connected with the screen name, or handle, of an Internet user.
The Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link, normally shortened to The WELL, is one of the oldest virtual communities in continuous operation. As of June 2012, it had 2,693 members. It is best known for its Internet forums, but also provides email, shell accounts, and web pages. The discussion and topics on The WELL range from deeply serious to trivial, depending on the nature and interests of the participants.
Davey Winder, previously known as "Wavey Davey" or "dwindera" but now settled as "happygeek", is a United Kingdom IT pundit who has worked as a consultant, writer and journalist. He is the 'IT Security Journalist of the Year (UK) 2010', an award he has won three out of the four years it has been given.
Jon Lebkowsky is a web consultant/developer, author, and activist who was the co-founder of FringeWare, Inc.. FringeWare, an early attempt at ecommerce and online community, published a popular "magalog" called FringeWare Review, and a literary zine edited by Lebkowsky called Unshaved Truths. FringeWare's email list, called the FringeWare News Network, established an international following for the organization, which also opened a store in Austin, Texas.
The Sensorama was a machine that is one of the earliest known examples of immersive, multi-sensory technology. This technology, which was introduced in 1962 by Morton Heilig, is considered as one of the earliest virtual reality (VR) systems.
Virtual Places Chat is software that uses the paradigm that any web page on the Internet is a chat room – or Virtual Place – if one or more people are viewing the page with the VPchat program. A web browser is an integral part of VPchat. When VPChat it is used there is a chat pane below the browser window in which the conversation text is displayed, below which is a box for entering text for the conversation. To the right of the browser window is a list of people in the room.
TWICS was a Japanese Internet Service Provider and online community. It was started in 1982 as a part of the non-profit International Education Center in Tokyo. Between 1982 and 1993, TWICS focused on their online community. Howard Rheingold wrote about their diverse international online community in his book, The Virtual Community. Joi Ito contributed ideas that led to the growth of the community, both as a teenager and later as president of PSINet Japan. Prior to TWICS offering public access Internet, Jeff Shapard led the company and developed the foundation for the community .
WeeWorld was an online game and messaging website, originally created in 2002 with a company that was based in Glasgow, Scotland, with a few offices in London and Boston, as well as other cities in the USA. The company had created WeeWorld.com, formally known as a social networking site, to which was mostly geared towards teens and tweens. The website is also known for its brand of instant messaging and chat-based avatars, known as “WeeMees”, Which was also released on a variety of digital platforms and services. There were approximately 180 million WeeMees created worldwide, but the site was unexpectedly shut down, as of May 11, 2017. From then on, there has not been anymore information from WeeWorld or the company itself. It is said that the company could no longer profit off of WeeWorld, and the only option left was to sell it to the new owners, who had then decided to shut it down.
Cloob.com is a Persian-language social networking website, mainly popular in Iran. After the locally popular social networking website Orkut was blocked by the Iranian government, a series of local sites and networks, including Cloob, emerged to fill the gap. Its main page contains the title Iranian Virtual Society and states that all content is controlled in accordance with Iranian law, a policy intended to lower the risk of government censorship. The website claims to have around 1 million members and over 100 million page views per month. Users have access to features like: internal email, communities and community discussions (clubs), personal and community photo albums, article archive for communities, live messaging and chat rooms for communities, weblog, job and resume database, virtual money, income/expense book keeping for individual members, online shops for offering goods and services, classifieds, questions and answers, link and content sharing, news, member updates and extensive permission setting capabilities.
1993 in philosophy
Public hypersphere is a new kind of public sphere that has come into existence globally through the use of modern information technology, digital media, and computer networks.
Virtual community may refer to: