BlogosphereAsACity
ThoughtStorms Wiki
Context : OnCities
City metaphors for the BlogoSphere
- TonZylstra : What is missing in the current Cyberspace, to be able to turn it into 'real' city-life? The red light district is well established, now even with tools that turn manipulations of another person into physical sensations by letting these tools be remotely controlled through your internet connection. Coffeehouses for conversation (portals, fora), libraries, livingrooms/frontporches (blogs), neighbourhoods emerge (blognetworks), and work shops (wiki's) are there as well, as are of course the shops and the auction houses. There are tribes and nations of people living alongside eachother, not necessarily mingling. Crime is there, scam artists, Nigerian and otherwise.
: But how many of us go to the theater on-line? I watch tv shows on-line, when available from public broadcasting websites here in the Netherlands, and the BBC. On-line stand up comedians? Fishmarkets? Harbours? Monuments? Old and new architecture? Heroes, villains
: http://www.zylstra.org/blog/archives/001320.html
The comments are good, too.
See also :
- PatternLanguageForTheSocialNetwork includes heroes and villains as well as technical stuff.
Other metaphors
Substituting the blogosphere for a city
Tom asks how to substitute CyberSpace for the city. I guess it would need to :
- Feed you
- fix your pipes and repoint your bathroom walls
- protect you from crime
- provide health-care
CounterThinking
What might be wrong with an easy analogy between cites and online social networks?
- Cities are spatial but not the blogosphere : SpaceVsInformationFlows talks about times spatial ideas let us down. But too much focus on space might be a mistake in cities too (TheCityAsInformationSystem)
- People are "born" into cites. And, until they can escape them they have no choice as to where to live. In general the blogosphere is for consenting adults who INTERUPT no, maybe not, do kids get dragged into LiveJournal or AOL blogs by their families / peer group?
- cities are defined in opposition to the country. Yet they are embedded in and dependent on it. (Bit like MarketsAreEmbedded in civil society). Is there an equivalent for CyberSpace? I suppose it's embedded in IRL and defines itself in opposition.
- Transport? WikiTourBus
Actually, the metaphor holds up pretty well. Except for the obvious difference that one is made of bits and the other atoms. But that's just SubstanceChauvanism right?
Compare :
- TheFutureOfTheCity which details the growth of cities around information flows