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Are Internet Communities Cities?
by Sandy Ikeda
Wed, 20 Aug 2008 at 1:59 PM
One of the courses I teach is called "Cities, Culture, & Economy." It's one of my favorites although, perhaps for that reason, it's also probably the most demanding for my students as well as for me. The requirements include a midterm, a final, five quizzes, a site study, well over 20 article summaries, and a term paper. And I usually have around 30 students, which means A LOT of grading! But since the subject matter relates directly to my research interests, and to the subject matter of this blog, reading and marking all this stuff is less irksome than it could be.
I promised my students last spring that I'd blog any paper that I deemed worthy. One of the more interesting ones was by Ms. Emily Reinheimer. I can't copy her entire paper here, of course, but I'll give some edited excerpts and offer some comments.
I propose that the Internet is the truest sense of the modern-day city. There are dense populations, a social infrastructure, complex architecture, rules, and culture. I will suggest that there is transportation as well as residences. Drawing mainly on the ideas of Jane Jacobs I will present the Internet as a modern day city that is governed under what I define as "Democratic Anarchy." Emily's paper addresses an issue I've been pondering lately: The extent to which an Internet community such as Second Life is a city. Another way to put it is to ask to what extent are such communities substitutes or complements to real face-to-face communities? I use Jane Jacobs's work as the analytical foundation, of course, which is why her concepts are so prominent in Emily's discussion.
Social capital is the relationships that we have through social interactions. These interactions are important because they are a way of connecting a large number of people … seemingly distant and diverse, that will lead way to opportunities, while propelling markets and businesses. In [Mark] Granovetter's distinction between "strong ties" and "weak ties" the Internet becomes obvious as a network of weak ties… Strong ties between friends and close relatives tend to result in stable but exclusive networks, while dynamic market processes, typically urban based, need weak ties (i.e., relations between relative strangers) over which agents can make entrepreneurial discoveries. Once established, weak ties become stronger by carrying more personal information over time. Social interactions in the "real" world are constrained, but on the Internet they can run to infinity … with the Internet, everyone that has access to it is connected. There are no social, cultural and institutional barriers. … Dunbar's number refers to the number of social connections that one is cognitively able to achieve [estimated to be from 150-250]… The Internet can push this number upward and actually lead to a more unified city construction.
While "infinity" is a pretty large number, her point is well taken that relations can potentially be much larger than Dunbar's number, although there is the question of whether the ties on Second Life or Facebook are the strong kind that Dunbar was referring to. It shouldn't be too hard to test this idea by looking at the average number of links in Facebook. In any case, strong ties usually begin as weak ties, and these are very great indeed on the Internet.
Cities are uniquely diverse. There is no better generator of diversity than the Internet. Jane Jacobs defines four generators of diversity and all relate to the Internet in one way or another. First, there must be more than one primary use. The Internet is full of primary uses that bring different people into the same "space" or arena for possible connection.
Secondly, there must be short blocks. In a city, short blocks create density with diversity. The short blocks of the Internet are hyperlinks, which are able to bring uses quickly and efficiently to anywhere on the web….
Next, buildings must vary in age. The buildings of the Internet are the sites…. There are equal opportunities for all to own a "building" and have an "address"… Everyone has access to addresses through e-mail accounts, though some may opt to purchase an address while others may choose to use the services for free.
Lastly, Jacobs argues that there must be a dense concentration of people. The Internet is the densest city with millions of users passing thought its streets every day.
These are all pretty close parallels to Jacobs's four generators. Her idea that "new ideas need old buildings" is essentially about affordability of working space, so Emily's discussion on that point, while not directly about age, is still relevant.
I call the Internet ruling system "Democratic Anarchy." What I mean by this is that there is governance mainly by the people. … There is no "ruler" of the Internet, nor is there Internet police … Like typical cities, Internet communities are largely unplanned, spontaneous orders.
The Internet is quickly emerging as a city. With 1,355,110,631 users globally, there are few that its borders don't include. The Internet generates diversity, creates and spreads new ideas, forms social networks, produces market growth, and much more. The Internet is the city to kill all cities." In the last sentence I'm sure Emily is expressing her belief in the tremendous potential of the Internet as a city and not that it will actually "kill" the need for conventional cities.
I think Emily's makes some good points but I'm not persuaded. I believe Internet communities complement but can never replace brick-and-mortar, flesh-and-blood cities. As I've blogged before, cities are resilient when it comes to natural disasters, but history also shows that technical and organizational innovations haven't managed to sweep them away either. Like the radio, telephone, television, or automobile, Internet technology can at best substitute at the margin for the actual face-to-face contacts that serve as the building blocks of any living city.
In any case, thank you, Emily, for a thoughtful and intriguing paper!
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