Reading week 4 | Visionary communities

CHAPTER 3.6: Visionary communities
On page 173 the book discusses the summary of (somewheat pro-technologic) claims from Jones (1994:26) that computer mediated communications will:

1. Create opportunities for education and learning.
Well yeah, I can see what point is being made here and yes, even though this book was written WAY before technology of this kind made it to the classroom Jones was right in suggesting that CMC was a good platform to use for educational purposes. It has become one of the main forms of communication in higher education, for example, on our course e-mail has become the main way to contact lecturers outside of lectures and seminars. Or, a more intense example: this very unit which is, bar the weekly lecture, completely internet-based.

2. Create new opportunities for participatory democracy.
It seems that democracy, and voting particularly, is still a bit of a non-mover. Several countries are doing tests with online-voting (I once participated in a test-session like that in the NL myself, gotta love dual citizenship!) but hasn't become the norm anywhere as yet. However, the internet IS a popular platform for campaigning and expressing political views and agenda's. Including those that not normally would have been published in any other type of media due to the small scale or individualist character of them.

3. Establish countercultures on an unprecedented scale.
Yes, it does, but, like I mentioned before, it enables these different counter-cultural norms of behaviour within a specific, smaller online community. A sub-culture is still a sub-culture, even online, the main difference is is that CMC makes subculture a lot more accesible for those interested.

4. Ensnarl already difficult legal matters concerning privacy, copyright and ethics.
I Jones by this means what I think he means then yes, people are more like to entangle themselves in these matters. And indeed, not exactly making them any easier, but at least people get actively involved with these matters rather than just following the norm entirely.

5. Restructure man/machine interaction.
Well, I suppose. We have become more dependent of machines, that's one thing that's for sure, seeing as we rely on it to communicate to others. But still, it's the other produser that's interacting with us though these technologies. It's not the actual machine, so... Not really.