There have been two conferences on Communities and Technologies, one in 2003 and another in 2005. Both have produced excellent collections based on the conference proceedings (links to the books: 2003, 2005). This conference is probably the best single gathering of academics interested in the social aspects of computing, new media, mobile devices, etc., and I am pleased to announce that a third conference has been planned for 2007. Have a look at the conference website and the call for papers. I am a member of the program committee (along with a truly standout list of researchers) and would strongly encourage anyone doing research in this area to submit a paper.
An article from this weekend’s Financial Times covers it all: Internet addiction, WiFi hotspots, location-awareness, mobile phones, information overload, flash mobs, network individualism… and the kitchen sink. Probably the broadest news article I have ever read on the impact of new media on society, it includes references and quotes from some of my favorite sociologists, including Manuel Castells, Barry Wellman, and Mizuko Ito. Despite the ambitious attempt at breadth, it brings together some really interesting concepts and does a nice job of providing an overview of some of the most relevant research questions currently under study. In particular I want to pint out references to Mizuko Ito’s new edited book Personal, Portable, Pedestrian: Mobile Phones in Japanese Life. I have been waiting for this book for some time. Ito\’s anthropological studies of mobile phone use amongst Japanese children are very revealing and contain numerous new and important observations. In particular, the use of mobile phones in maintaining a type of “full-time intimacy” or persistent social contacts, the obligations of cell phone use, and the role of text messaging in signaling availability for other forms of exchange.
Fred Turner of the Department of Communication at Stanford has just published one of the most interesting articles on a virtual community that I have read in a long time. \”Where the Counterculture Met the New Economy: The WELL and the Origins of Virtual Community\” is interesting because it reveals the role of offline relationships in the origins and maintenance of one of the earliest online communities, the WELL (made famous in Howard Rheingold\’s The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier). Fred not only provides a detailed account of the origins of the WELL, but explores its roots in the counterculture of the 1960s. Fred\’s account is a great examples of the overlap between online and offline relationships using one of the earliest examples of a virtual community. The above link to the paper will only work if your library is an institutional subscriber, you may want to contact Fred Turner directly for a copy.