Reading Response to "The Virtual Community"

It is hard to think of WELL as unique without its exclusiveness. Howard Rheingold claims in his “The Virtual Community” that he has “written this book to help inform a wider population about the potential importance of cyberspace to political liberties, and the ways virtual communities are likely to change our experience of the real world.” In other words, the potential of “the virtual community” may change how we perceive as living as an individual within a community.

However, a counter opinions of mine casts doubt over the implication of such proposal. Rheingold’s optimistic idea that people can use the intellectual diversity “as a kind of living encyclopedia” is based on diversity with clear boundaries. Clearly, such use of CMC is of great appeal, and it will be an easily developed tendency to desiring the expansion of such technology, to everyone in the world; so that the free exchange of knowledge and cares can color the life despite physical distance. However I wonder the “intellectual diversity” the author was talking about may have its boundary, and what this boundary materialized as is the $2 per hour charges and the access to a PC, and even a telephone. Consider the majority of the source of knowledge online: doctors, lawyers, computer programmers, journalists, etc., they are well educated and not very much worry about their basic need. Now we return to the cliché argument about the “digital divide.” However, instead of seeing this return as a shutting down of the discussion, it will be more helpful to include the author’s rich experience with the virtual community into the debate of the “digital divide”, asking questions of how will the WELL member react to the participate of people out of their class, and will there be only one virtual community or there will be communities with identifiable social differences?

It is also interesting to reflect on how he views his life in the “real world”, his wife and his daughter, as different and excluded from his experience in WELL. There, he is an individual, an intellectual, the active participate in many discussions including the Parenting conference. Doesn’t he receive more reward of performing his role as a parent and acquiring the right of sharing his parenting experience than actually parenting?