Page 585 - Sociology and You

Chapter 16 Population and Urbanization 555
Some people find life in the big city so impersonal that they feel no sense of belonging to a community. Recently organizers in several locations have been trying to use the Internet to rebuild community relationships through electronic networks. These dedicated—special- ized—virtual communities use communications technology to link peo- ple who live in the same area, city, or neighborhood.
Organizers of community networks share the goals of local partici- pation, community building, and democracy. As with the New England colonies’ town meetings, the ideal of the new community networks is to include everyone. Supporters of the new technology claim that elec- tronic communications will allow people to reestablish more personal
Virtual Communities relationships.
As with all projects involving technology, though, the problem of “electronic stratification” arises. Because of the costs involved, access to technological advances is not equally distributed throughout the community. Low- income individuals and families cannot afford com- puters or Internet access, and public agencies are not ready to supply sufficient funding. Furthermore, as computers become more sophisticated, people who are not already computer literate (especially lower-income people) will have an increasingly dif- ficult time catching up. The technologically poor
will become technologically poorer.
The Boulder (Colorado) Community Network
(BCN), established in the mid-1990s, experienced many of these problems. The founders of BCN trained many different Boulder groups to use community networks. They found that accep- tance varied widely among the groups. For ex- ample, residents at a local senior citizens’ home became avid users of the community computers placed in their facility. In contrast, a group of low-income single parents virtually ignored the existence of the computers and the Internet,
even after extensive training (Virnoche, 1998). If community networks do become firmly established, critics warn, the “human factor” will still be lacking. When people meet through the Internet, they have no social clues, such as body language and facial expressions, with which to learn about their new acquaintances. No matter how much you learn about another person on-line, critics say, you have not met some-
one for real until you meet in person (Herbert, 1999).
Analyzing the Trends
What do you think will be the most significant effects of virtual com- munities on social roles?
iVillage.com is a Web site offering a virtual community for women.