After today’s individual and then group activity, I only have this to say: I’m sorry I collected your papers! So many of you had such good notes on them, including stuff from the discussion. I don’t know why I didn’t expect that to happen. I clearly wasn’t thinking, uh, clearly.

If anyone wants their notes back, I’ll bring them on Tuesday. Remember that for Tuesday (and for the next three weeks) we’ll be reading out of the Nakamura book so no need to lug around the big pink reader.

Don’t forget the blog post and comments this week, and recall that next week’s assignment available as well.

For anyone who missed it, here is a link to a game. Play it in “night mode” to really mess with your head.

Today’s class began by talking about the blogs much longer than I intended (but you had questions, so there’s that). The upshot is what I originally said: 75% of people did their blog posts; only about 50% did comments. This is frustrating not only for me but for the students who actually want to do their work on time and can’t. As it says on the blog assignments page, the posts are due by Friday at 5pm. Comments can be done then, either on the post already published for the week or for the week before. Or, you can circle back around in a reasonable time frame (sometime before Monday afternoon, which doesn’t mean Monday night—it means early afternoon) to comment on the posts for Friday.

Some other important points:

• people who have set their blog up to hold all comments for administrative approval need to approve those comments in a timely fashion—not only because I need to give the people credit for their work, but because comments approved after the fact can dramatically alter the comment thread.
• please don’t comment anonymously—I can’t give you credit for your work that way (note: nicks are not anonymous; if I can figure out who you are by following the link to your profile, for example, that’s pseudonymous, not anonymous, and is fine.)
• If your blogging group has failed you entirely by not posting in a timely fashion, you can comment outside your group (in fact, in assignments in the future that will be part of it)

One last thing about the blogs: if your name is not on the blogroll on this site, I don’t have the URL to your blog, haven’t read any posts, nor have your classmates. Some of you also seemed confused when I said that I’ve commented on everything that I’ve read—it’s true, unless the post was very late. In those cases, I read and evaluate but don’t comment. I comment as “JM” in case that is also confusing.

Ok, so back to the content. The initial guiding question was actually a leftover: “What exactly makes communities you’ve described virtual communities rather than simply an extension of the physical world?” Then we had a long discussion in which some people felt was off topic but was not (which is why it continued…); you see, Robins’s “Against Virtual Community” was all about the struggle of definition. Sure, he threw his own argument in there, but it was for the most part subsumed by his reading of other arguments. The Robins article did nothing to clarify the question, and that was the point. Feel free to take that up in the comments if you want.

But the Bell article, “Webs as Pegs,” is something that we’ll touch on first before moving to the readings for Thursday, because his is the fired salvo that should get things moving (in the classroom, but also the field). His argument is essentially “MOVE ON!” from the false binary arguments; he talks a lot about Bakardjieva’s notion of “immobile socialization” (see “readings for last week”) and the goal of pure communities (which is to some extent what Brent was talking around in class, but not everyone is there yet).

So, Thursday should be interesting. Do note that the blog assignment for this week is available (was available Monday night). Also note that the blog assignment for NEXT week is also available. Start organizing that one now.

Good job discussing stuff on Thursday; the biggest takeaway questions to ponder would be along these lines: “Having defined ‘community,’ and knowing something about ‘the virtual,’ what exactly is the difference between a community and a virtual community? Is a ‘real life’ community that bleeds into a virtual space a ‘virtual community’?”

On Tuesday we’ll continue our discussion of community with two more readings from The Cybercultures Reader. Remember that a blog assignment is due today, one that includes interacting with other folks in your blogging group.

For anyone interested in the stuff I mentioned briefly at the beginning of class, about digital (im)permanence, you can read more about it in this blog post by Mark Sample (which includes a link to something I wrote on the subject as well, about the Hari Kunzru story I mentioned): “The Archive or the Trace: Cultural Permanence and the Fugitive Text”

As of Wednesday morning, I’m still working through leaving comments on your first real blog posts. As I mentioned, the vast majority are very good.

What is not good—what is actually irrelevant in this context, are value judgments on whether or not the authors of the readings are “crazy” or “make no sense.” Here’s a hint: the authors are not crazy, these readings do make sense, and blog posts about the readings being boring, crazy, or nonsensical not only are off-topic, they don’t exactly reflect engagement or effort. Critical reading and thinking is hard. That’s the point.

The in-class writing you did on Tuesday was also, generally, quite good. You can expect things like that on a regular basis. It’s the easiest way to gauge where people are in their work, as well as to find things that need to be addressed more than planned. But I thought the discussion on Tuesday was good—lots of different voices, lots of good examples. Keep bringing those to the table.

I’ve posted the blog assignment for Friday, and now I shall get back to leaving comments on your blog posts regarding cyberspace…

Oh! On updated statistics in a lot of related areas, go to the Pew Internet & American Life Project. Their report on Home Broadband Adoption is quite interesting. You can also find specific reports and media mentions in the digital divide category.

Some of you may be interested in something I wrote about Facebook last month, after the latest round of changes to the way in which they handle your personal information:

• Managing Facebook Privacy Settings (round 2) (Dec 11, 2009 at ProfHacker)

You are in no way required to read this—I offer the link simply because I mentioned some of these things in class.

First, some administrative things: I have URLs for all but 7 of your blogs. Those 7 of you who haven’t sent me a URL, please do so. It is likely you know who you are, but if not, just check the sidebar of this blog. If your name does not appear, then I have not received your blog URL. The first full-points blog response is due today (Friday); here’s the assignment if you’ve lost your wee slip of paper.

Become familiar with the folks in your blogging group, as commenting on group members’ blog posts will be part of the assignments starting with the second one. But just because it’s not part of the assignment now doesn’t mean you can’t comment—there’s a lot of interesting stuff out there, from the introductions to the first responses on personal conceptions of cyberspace.

Thursday’s class was pretty much how class will always go—we’ll have a reading, I may or may not say something about it in depth, and discussion will be free-flowing and generative. The readings for Tuesday are linked from the online version of the course calendar which is found on the course web site. As a reminder, I do not use ANGEL or any other e-learning/virtual learning environment—our course information is found on the course web site and here, on the course blog.

Oh, one other note on your weekly blog posts: you don’t have to send me an e-mail when you make a new blog post. I have all of your blogs in my RSS feed reader and know when something new has been posted.

Today was a very exciting first day, in which we went over the syllabus and the first week’s assignments. The major thing to do is to get your blog up and running. Free accounts at Blogger.com or WordPress.com are the way to go. Both are quite simple, although I believe Blogger to be a bit more simple and non-overwhelming than WordPress for the first-time blogger.

After setting up your blog, be sure to send me the URL and write your first (introductory) post. There is a “real” blog assignment due Friday, based on the reading for Thursday, Michael Benedikt’s “Cyberspace: First Steps” article, which is linked here in PDF form (and also linked on the course calendar in PDF form).

I said I would link to examples of “4 point” (highest possible grade for content) blog posts. These are from a literature course, but the engagement with reading is still the same. These are in no particular order—they are all super. Also, you could look at any of the blog posts on these blogs and consider them to be 3 or 4 point posts.

• example 1
• example 2
• example 3
• example 4
• example 5

Hello everyone! Throughout the course, I will be using this blog to write up some of my own comments after class, and to make comments in general about things I see you talking about on your blogs.

In the column on the right you will soon find a list of all of the blogs in the class, randomly placed into groups. I picked the names of the groups from some movers and shakers in cyberspace culture and theory who we are not reading in this course. Yes, I did that on purpose.