The Wired Neighborhood [Hardcover]

Stephen Doheny-Farina (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 25, 1996

Are communication technologies ushering in a new age of computer networks that connect people into worldwide virtual communities of like-minded individuals? Or are global computer networks isolating us from real relationships and from our society, as we stare into a screen instead of interacting face to face? In this book, Stephen Doheny-Farina explores the nature of cyberspace and the increasing virtualization of everyday life. He occupies a middle ground between these two extreme views of the net, arguing that electronic neighbourhoods should be less important than geophysical neighbourhoods in all their integrity and that we must use the new technologies not to escape from our troubled communities but to reinvigorate them. Doheny-Farina offers a critical perspective on virtual reality and its social impact, showing us how people meet and converse on the net, how they teach and learn and how they establish workplaces that can accompany them wherever they go. Along the way he reveals the advantages and hazards of making the computer the centre of our public and private lives. Doheny-Farina argues that once we begin to divorce ourselves from geographic place and start investing our-selves in virtual communities, we further the dissolution of our real, dying communities. He speaks out in favour of a movement called civic networking, which promotes the proliferation of networks that originate locally to organize community information and culture and to foster pride in and responsibility to our neighbourhoods.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

A level-headed analysis of the nature of community in the online world, and the effect of the online world on real-world communities. Contains some of the best discussions I have encountered about the substantive qualitative value of projects such as the National Public Telecomputing Network, which, to my mind, could serve the same balancing service for the future of the Internet that National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service have served for radio and television in the U.S., Recommended

From Publishers Weekly

In his book about how computer technology affects our relationship to our geophysical communities, Doheny-Farina, an associate professor of technical communications at Clarkson University in upstate New York, offers excellent discussions on telecommuting, virtual education and also on community nets (locally based networks that serve as town hall, bulletin board, etc.) as the most recent version of early public-access cable TV. The problem is that much of his often wistful discussion is about a community that has already been thoroughly, perhaps fatally, compromised by the telephone and the car. Admitting that requires one of two responses?either expanding the argument to include these other earlier technologies, or else admitting that we have accommodated to that technology and (aside from the few lost netsouls) will accommodate to this. His discussion of possible alternatives are generally logged-in suggestions about community-based CMC, like Ottawa's National Capital FreeNet. But one of the most important parts of community building is the unplanned encounter?not the convergence of common interests but the chance meetings that make for a more generalized neighborliness. Doheny-Farina hints at the importance of this kind of interaction at several places but doesn't address it in his solution. Then again maybe this is just an acknowledgment of the computer's basic function. Computers were designed to make it easier to get what we know we want, not to find what we never knew we needed.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press; 1st Printing edition (September 25, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300067658
• ISBN-13: 978-0300067651
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.7 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,710,168 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars excellent, level-headed, and thought-provoking, October 12, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Wired Neighborhood (Hardcover)

a very well-considered look at the realtionship between digital communications technology and local communities, with particularly good treatment of public access, education, and attempts to use computers to enhance, rather than undermine, neighborhood and community relations. Highly recommended.