Idle Mind - the Online thing
Surprise, Surprise
Online - What it is?
What I had in mind for this section was pointers to stuff that tried to get
a handle on just how revolutionary and important this whole cyber thing is...
the sociology of it, the psychology of it, and how folks are going to evolve as a
result of it...
I'm curious about what makes for the perfect bbs, the perfect sysop, the perfect
online hangout... I've sure as heck got my own opinions, but for the longest
time it seemed like it wasn't even a subject worth having an opinion about...
I've had the eyeballs peeled for five solid years now, and there's still only
a handful of things that even start to get it right, and a whole lot of stuff
that misses the point... time does tell, tho, and
there's certainly a heckuva lot more out there now than there was...
Habitat
One of the first things we found that seemed to have a clue about the
subtleties and dynamics of online interaction was an article called
"The Lessons of Habitat" in an
anthology of cyber-type articles. That article is still well worth checking out, though it's very long and
probably best read in the book from which it was swiped: Cyberspace:
First Steps, Michael Benedikt (ed.), 1990,
MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.
But there's a load of
additional material out here now about Habitat and its offshoots and
similar communities. Have a look...
- Electric Communities Papers!
- Electric Communities
- Caribe Pages - Documents Page
- Crazy Que - Home Page
Other points of interest
- Elizabeth Shamblin's Home Page
- Boy oh boy, this is hardcore online sociology, the real deal...
way academic (I think that's good!), they call it
"Computer Mediated Communication"...
- La
Maisonnette de Frédéric
- Un cyberpal, Fred's into scars, techno, cocorico, and plastic,
and he updates his page on a semi-annual basis. The drawing of the nekkid
people licking each other has been replaced with his own blurred face, but
check back next spring, ya never know. Fred artfully sidesteps the
banality of directly addressing cyber sociology, but he's clearly had his
brain neatly sheared by something, and all evidence points to the online
thing.
- The Lessons of Habitat
- See above. Worth a look-see cause, for instance, of what it says,
indirectly, about
the role of the sysop...
- "Anarchy on the Net must end"
- Hacker hooligans wouldn't let Martha Spiegel spam...
"People need safety and order in Cyberspace just as they do in
their homes and on the streets."
Well, huh!
CyberPalZ
-
just john's Away Page
- Home ain't always where your heart is, sometimes it's just where you
are. A clever dood, just indeed. Are we the best, or what?
- Off
the Beaten Path
- Take a number, stand in line. Nothing's blown me away
as pleasantly and as much as finding out what a pal of a
pal had been up to. Holy HECK!
- Bluemuse
- Warning! The man is determined to include actual
content on his pages, and he's proceeding at a frightening pace.
When our tastes overlap (Velvets! Richard Hell! Lester Bangs!
Television!), they really overlap, so I can't wait.
- Frederic
Madre's Home
- So so SO that he wound up being linked here not once,
not twice, but
three different
times...
And hold on! Fred's delicate and unique aesthetic sensibility seems
to be inspiring those whose
own sensibilities are een beetje
flexible...
- Steve
Miller
- I'll bet dollars to donuts [??] that this link
doesn't work.
But hey, Steve's out there somewhere, you can guess his URL based
on this one
the way that I always wind up doing.
- Zen Poet
- Future home of a glam page. He promised!
Meanwhile, and maybe in its stead, he's got the goofiest history
of
Sparks
imaginable, most of it clearly off the top of his head. Good stuff,
have a look.
Raw links
Last modified on Tuesday, 19-Mar-2002 21:04:19 CST