Is our class a community?

This obviously is not our class. Photo courtesy: http://www.smithclass.org/proj/Monsters/2008/intros08/BlacksClassSept.jpg

I would not consider our English 1101 class a community. There may have been certain things that united the class as a group of people, but there was nothing really there that would make the class a community. One could say that several pockets of communities formed within the class. The groups that were assigned for the final project could each be considered a community more so than the entire class. We were all given the task of working together in order to get the job done. Frequent group meetings allowed the members of the group to get to know each other better, thus making it seem as if we had grown into a small community for the sake of this assignment. I'm sure that the other groups would feel the same way as our group did in regards to them developing into small communities. There was interaction between almost all of the students in our class, unfortunately, as stated before; there was not enough interaction to make the class into a community. The class was not trying to reach a common goal and after the class period was over each day, we would all disband, thus meaning we were not a true community.

Embodied Community

The embodied community I chose to participate in this semester was Georgia Tech as a whole. I chose Georgia Tech because in many ways, it is its own autonomous civilization located in the middle of Atlanta. I consider Georgia Tech to be a community because it is working together in many ways to achieve a goal. Some people are here for an education, others are here for research, some are here to teach, and few are here to play sports. While all of these people have different goals, they are all working together in some way. The Tech student may feel compelled to do research after having a particularly good professor who may interest them more in the subject they wish to research. The athletes have the task of keeping the students and faculty entertained and also bringing revenue to the school through sponsorships and by making more people interested in buying licensed school products. The researchers bring esteem and recognition of the school to the international community which interests more and more people into coming to Georgia Tech.

I consider myself a part of the community of Georgia Tech because I am a student here. I plan on becoming even further involved with more activities including going Greek in the spring. Some people may not go out and enjoy the social life Georgia Tech has to offer, but that does not make them any less involved or a part of the community here. That just means that as a member of the community at large, they choose to participate less in an embodied sense than others. Some of these same people may be more involved in digital communities than those involved in the embodied communities here at Tech, and as a result may not see the need to get as involved in the real world as others.

Cybercrime on Ultimate Guitar

The image above was taken from ultimate-guitar.com's forum: The Pit. Cybercrime is not really too much of an issue on these forums, however, if anyone decides to post malicious or pornographic content, measures will be taken to stop such things from happening. For example, the picture shows two locked threads on the site. This means that the moderators chose to make posting to these threads impossible and have deleted anything comments that they found inappropriate or malicious. Cybercrime isn't the only reason for locking topics though, since the website has many topic forums, they can choose to lock topics that are off subject. The image below shows the main forum portal on the site.

This method of locking threads and deleting inappropriate posts is an effective and fair way of dealing with crime on ultimate-guitar.com. As has happened before, at one point, someone posted child pornography on the site, during which point the site completely shut down the forums and permanently banned the user and I believe reported the user's information to the FBI.

All of these actions are appropriate to make in the event of a cybercrime occuring on this website. I hope that any website would go about taking the same actions in the event that a cybercrime happened on their website as well.

Skylit Grove and Why It Isn't Like a Virtual Community

The community my group designed, Skylit Grove Integrated Living Community, known simply as Skylit Grove, is an embodied community, and as such, it des not have much to do with neither Mcgonigal nor Webb's article from this week. Webb mentions how virtual communities allow fo deception. Many people who are a part of these communities can be quite rude and mean spirited due to the anonymity of the Internet. This is usually not the case in most embodied communities and since ours is embodied, would not affect the people living in it. People feel a sense of power when they cannot be held liable for their actions; this is why so many people begin "trolling" on online forums and chat rooms. When people live among each other for a long period of time and get to know each other, this is more unlikely to happen. Skylit Grove is meant as an integrated living communty for older people which means, in essence,it is a really involved and fun retirement home. The whole reason for this place is to make people happy during the last years of their lives and as such, negative vibes and feelings would be discouraged among residents. It is inevitable that arguments would occur, as in any place, but seeing as how this community s embodied and not virtual,these arguements would be less likely to grow out of control. The addistion of a swimming pool, tennis courts, a ballroom for dancing, and many relaxing areas in and around the area we display for our community are there in order to make the place more comforting to the people living there. With comfort and relaxation being our community's main themes, there would be less tension among residents which mean that the people there would feel like they could be more open with each other without being rude or misleading like many people in virtual communities can be.

WoW: A Network, Emphasis on the "Ork"

When comparing postmodern communities and networks, on must consider that they are basically comparing the idea of something that is invente as the result of a loss and something that exists, but does not require absolute commitment. One may belong to a network or several networks and feel very little sense of "belongingness" to some of these networks, while he or she may be very connected with others. World of Warcraft players are a cybersubculture and based on the definitions in Day's article, they belong to the network that is created by World of Warcraft.
Users who play World of Warcraft ar rewarded based upon how muh and how often they play, while the game itself also offers incentives so that users don't spend too much time playing the game and dedicating themself to it. This fits the description of networks entirely as they are made as a place where people may find relationships with others without feeling like they ust spend all of their ime committed to this single community. The people within this communty are actually rewarded for not committing themselves entirely to it by getting double experience for a period of time based upon how much time they spend not play World of Warcraft.
Like Day mentions, "Networks do more than link people together; they provide the basis for social cohesion and cooperation", in World of Warcraft, playing the game with others allows one to more easily reach and complete goals withing the game. These users are cohesive because they must stick together and commit themselves in part to the network to reach a common goal of attaining the best gear they can. The game encourages cooperation by making it a competitive process among guilds to be the best and most well recognized among other users, thus rewarding the guilds with the most well organized and cooperative members.

Balancing individuality and conformity.

How the forums of Ultimate-Guitar.com look. http://www.ultimate-guitar.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=11

On ultimate-guitar.com, individuality and conformity are balanced, but the two often affect each other. One such example would be how people can be individuals by choosing to speak openly about certain things on the website’s forums. On topic specific forums about genres of music, one could claim to be a fan of reggae and emo music, while on the open forum known as “the Pit”, people can talk about how they are an openly gay or what their specific political affiliation is. The way conformity comes into this is how while everyone has an opinion on certain issues, moderators on the site will not allow for rude behavior towards others on the site. In this way, everyone can be an individual and have their own opinion, but they are not allowed to organize against or be hateful towards another group that they disagree with, thus; they must conform to the Ultimate-Guitar’s guidelines on proper forum use. Ultimate-Guitar is an online community, but it features very little diversity since the primary users of the site are white male guitarists, because for the most part, most users of the site are guitarists, and most guitarists are white males. Diversity, however; is accepted since most of these users find it interesting that others share a common thing with them.

Introducing New Technology Into a Community

Introducing computer technology, which would include more specifically iTunes and access to music, into communities such as those in Africa, which may not have had access to them in any way before, would, I believe, have a positive impact on their community as a whole. Giving everyone in an African village access to iPods and music would help link the people of that village together in positive ways because they would be able to bond over something outside of just the day to day happenings of their village. Music is known as the great communicator for a reason, and with access to music, the people of the village would, though indirectly, become more connected to the larger world community. If given these devices, I believe these communities would be more effective in accomplishing their community goals. Farmers would be more productive listening to music as opposed to listening to nothing, because it would help break the monotony of such work. I think that there would be some instances in which this technology would be more distracting than helpful, but this is true any sort of technology introduced to a community; there are always those people who use something in excess and end up being less productive as a result. It’s possible that this technology could positively or negatively impact this specific village’s relations with other African tribes. This could lead to several results. The village could use the technology for good and trade it with other tribes for supplies or could possibly offer it as a sign of good faith to the surrounding tribes. On the other hand, the other villages could become jealous of the technology the community has and attack it for its technology. This is why such an experiment has the capability of becoming a perilous one.