Newsmaker: Keeping it real about virtual living

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How do you feel that the nature of online communities has changed in the last couple of years?
Rheingold: Some things about online social behavior seems to be eternal and universal--trolls and griefers and the eternal meta-debate about what to do about them, for example. There's a widespread amnesia, as if these kinds of cybersocializing were new. Not many people online have much sense of history. That's probably true of just about everything. What I really like is that it's so easy to roll your own these days. It used to be a big deal to set up your own chat or BBS or listserv. Now it's part of the tool set for millions of people, and it's mostly free. My main concern has always been about the quality of online discourse--are we improving or degrading the public sphere?

What did you think of Time magazine's naming "You" as person of the year?
Rheingold: Time usually names a phenomenon when it mainstreams. Although it's typical that they used "you"--as opposed to "us," the editors--instead of "us." But it mainstreams commons-based peer production, which is way too stuffy a term for most people. The idea that people only act for profit is pernicious and outmoded. Sometimes, self-interest adds up to more for everyone. And sometimes, if it's easy enough, most people will do things for altruistic purposes. The research on open-source production seems to indicate that a mixture of motives is necessary for creating public goods like open-source software, Wikipedia, etc. Reputation, profit, learning, fun, altruism. Profit is in there, for sure. It's just not the only motivation.

I see a real continuity in the Dionysian dimension--rock and roll, acid tests, raves and Burning Man are an evolutionary continuum.

You are a Burning Man veteran. What kind of parallels do you see between Burning Man and virtual worlds and online communities?
Rheingold: Without e-mail, Burning Man never would have gotten off the ground, and of course there are countless mail lists and wikis used by the various camps to organize their act. And Burning Man is a great example of commons-based peer production and that mixture of motives--except there isn't much profit in spending all year and thousands of dollars planning, hauling, constructing and burning Big Art. I see a real continuity in the Dionysian dimension--rock and roll, acid tests, raves and Burning Man are an evolutionary continuum. I'd say that Dionysians are getting better at it.

Nite Zelmanov (from the audience) asks: Are we improving or degrading the public sphere? Is the signal-to-noise ratio of modern mob communications too low to really enrich us, or is this unprecedented collaboration actually leading to a better informed, better educated and more empowered public?
Rheingold: I really think an educational effort is called for--in the broadest sense. In the olden days, Usenet veterans would teach Netiquette to newcomers. Every September, jillions of new college students would come online and people would take time to educate them--not always gently. But then AOL dumped 3 million people on the Net without instruction and it became the September that never ended. I personally think that the importance of online discourse ought to be taught in high school, but public education changes slowly. My latest effort is at https://www.socialtext.net/medialiteracy. I'm trying to find some funding to set up after school and summer programs to teach participatory media as an avenue to civic engagement about issues that young people care about.

Polysilox Apogee (from the audience) asks: Are you familiar with the (Sun Microsystems co-founder) Bill Joy and (high-tech inventor) Ray Kurzweil debate? And what are your thoughts about where digital becomes a part of the real day-to-day world, like foglets and nano and all that stuff?
Rheingold: I'm concerned about autonomous technology, so I'm sympathetic to Bill Joy's concerns. One always has to take Kurzweil seriously because he has solved some hard problems, but I am reminded of (inventors) Bucky Fuller and Doug Engelbart. Engineers often have a somewhat limited vision about consequences. Let's put it this way. There is a lot of money available to flog the benefits of untested technologies, but the only people besides Bill Joy who worry about the consequences seem to be either obscure academics, or skeptics like (computer specialist) Cliff Stoll who have their own set of blinders. Langdon Winner is a brilliant technology critic, but who here has heard of him? Deep and broad and thoughtful technology criticism isn't that popular.  

More Newsmakers

[Len Bullard]

Kudos

Well-spoken and in touch, Rheingold demonstrates why his bits are better than the average bits.

The nuance missing in most mob discussions is quality. In the dumb hum of the mob that is what is lost first. It seems to be a tired concept, but it is the central one. The two things money will not buy back is lost time and wasted talent. Think of the yin and yang of blues, rock and jazz. Once the available libraries are pillaged, there is a slide downward and the popular art shows it. Then there is a reevaluation of basics and the artists begin "running up that hill with no problems".

The second wave of online communities is on the incline challenging the gravity of the closed server farm technologies and the need to move away from that outdated concept toward peer-to-peer locally hosted non-linear worlds that can integrate the linear forms such as video and audio. The holy grail is an avatar that can go to any webworld preserving form while inheriting privileges from the local environment, becoming both in essence and in fact, the identity token of the web visitor.

Immersion is the synonym of presence. The day of the web page is over. The day of the real-time world is dawning.

[Prokofy Neva]

Mock Mobs

I'm not a big fan of Howard Rheingold's; it's collectivism of the old Marxian variety without any demonstrable excellence. You can never understood why we had to forsake the individual and his dignity and his ability to dissent against the mob -- which is the real problem in Second Life. It isn't even sock mobs but mock mobs, little groups that are not only fake mobs -- they consist of say, the Toxic 20 of the forums who used to lord it over others there -- but people who come together soley for the purpose of identifying themselves by mocking others -- you get this with what Warren Ellis is purveying on secondlife.reuters.com now with is column in which he cranks about suburbanites and mass taste. There's no freedom for ordinary people to do as they like in SL, only the freedom of the aesthete and the coder.

I'm not getting the AOL hatred. AOL is to blame for the lack of content in the mobs of semi-educated? The Internet itself merely amplifies something created in real life.

Nite Zelmanov has asked the right question here. Where is the demonstrable excellence and quality we have gotten from a group versus an individual in Second Life, such as to endlessly fete and fetishize the group uber alles?