Networked People/Networked Communities

Everywhere we look in our daily lives, we contribute to a network of people, either in our workplace, among friends or in social club activites we enjoy. Ok so what about in the Information Age, what networked communities are at work? They are numerous on the Internet: some mentioned by Judy O'Connell are Flickr, Facebook, Limewire, Skyrider, Mypace, Amazon, KaZaa, Itunes Webstore and also blinkX TV..I admit to using a few of these, some i use no longer but personally, the addictiveness of the virtual network community is quite extensive, and it took me a long time to escape Myspace for instance..Each one engages the user by enabling them to participate in sharing their knowledge, skills and resources through email, blogging, posting comments etc. These social and information-sharing networks are now an essential part of the lives of many of us now, in particular younger generations: that is, Gen. Y, X..and Z.

New media analyst Terry Flew gives insight into the broad spectrum of fields it covers, some including the "political economy, communications and sociology as well as psychology, the visual arts and history" (Flew 2005: 20). Take the example of the University Database System that holds valuable resources like journals, periodicals and up-to-date info. on everything you need. Many of these databases are only accessible to the university student, however they are not necessarily more useful than open-end databases like Blackwell-Synergy which I believe are far more "information sensitive" than say, Proquest or Infotrack. The open-end sources give the rest of the community access to valuable, reliable academic material, so different networks on the Internet can take this information (Wikipedia, Amazon, anything really..) and use it for their own understanding. This point illustrates that information is open to everyone now, as it well should be and can carry across different networked communities.




I picked up an interesting example from Graham Attwell's slides on "Knowledge Maturing and Learning" on the psychology of a networked community. So basically, Graham might stumble upon an open or closed-forum website and begin to "lurk" around, basically to grasp if the information people are sharing is useful for his own devices. After a few months, he may "post" a comment on someones opinion on a matter, and a few months later he will start to post regularly and by this stage he has signed up with the forum, and is an active user. Vigotski defines this example of behaviour as "legitimate peripheral participation," which simply means a user comes from the outside into the center of communal knowledge system as their own knowledge is identified and diffused into the present knowledge system. I did this same thing before i signed into 'Boostcruising' a car forum, by checking out people's cars, who bought them, setting up inspections, or ogle=ing..that was me for a while. I went through the exact same process as Graham Attwell. This point illustrates that networks involve alot of psychology, and I may add the psychology of the user can even change based on how other think in that community.