The Wired Neighborhood

The Wired Neighborhood PDF Author: Stephen Doheny-Farina
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300074345
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
Are communication technologies ushering in a wondrous 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 eloquent and thoughtful 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 neighborhoods should be less important than geophysical neighborhoods 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 center of our public and private lives. Doheny-Farina argues that once we begin to divorce ourselves from geographic place and start investing ourselves in virtual communities, we further the dissolution of our real, dying communities. He speaks out in favor 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 neighborhoods.

Digital Cities

Digital Cities PDF Author: Toru Ishida
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3540464220
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 452

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Book Description
On the way towards the Information Society, global networks such as the Internet, together with mobile computing, have made wide-area computing over virtual communities a reality. Digital city projects, with the goal of building platforms to support community networking, are going on worldwide. This is the first book devoted to digital cities. It is based on an international symposium held in Kyoto, Japan, in September 1999. The 34 revised full papers presented were carefully selected for inclusion in the book; they reflect the state of the art in this exciting new field of interdisciplinary research and development. The book is divided into parts on design and analysis, digital city experiments, community network experiments, applications, visualization technologies, mobile technologies, and social interaction and communityware.

The Wired Neighborhood

The Wired Neighborhood PDF Author: Stephen Doheny-Farina
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300074345
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 244

Get Book Here

Book Description
Are communication technologies ushering in a wondrous 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 eloquent and thoughtful 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 neighborhoods should be less important than geophysical neighborhoods 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 center of our public and private lives. Doheny-Farina argues that once we begin to divorce ourselves from geographic place and start investing ourselves in virtual communities, we further the dissolution of our real, dying communities. He speaks out in favor 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 neighborhoods.

Community in the Digital Age

Community in the Digital Age PDF Author: Andrew Feenberg
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
ISBN: 0742574431
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 303

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Book Description
Is the Internet the key to a reinvigorated public life? Or will it fragment society by enabling citizens to associate only with like-minded others? Online community has provided social researchers with insights into our evolving social life. As suburbanization and the breakdown of the extended family and neighborhood isolate individuals more and more, the Internet appears as a possible source for reconnection. Are virtual communities 'real' enough to support the kind of personal commitment and growth we associate with community life, or are they fragile and ultimately unsatisfying substitutes for human interaction? Community in the Digital Age features the latest, most challenging work in an important and fast-changing field, providing a forum for some of the leading North American social scientists and philosophers concerned with the social and political implications of this new technology. Their provocative arguments touch on all sides of the debate surrounding the Internet, community, and democracy.

Rethinking Neighborhoods

Rethinking Neighborhoods PDF Author: William A.V. Clark
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
ISBN: 1035307944
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 237

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Book Description
Although neighborhoods are sometimes perceived as just a backdrop to our lives, there is considerable evidence that they are central to our sense of wellbeing, and in the functioning of the city. Rethinking Neighborhoods is about these areas of geography: what we know about how neighborhoods function, why they matter and how we chose where to live.

The Neighborhood Project

The Neighborhood Project PDF Author: David Sloan Wilson
Publisher: Hachette UK
ISBN: 0316175250
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 448

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Book Description
After decades studying creatures great and small, evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson had an epiphany: Darwin's theory won't fully prove itself until it improves the quality of human life in a practical sense. And what better place to begin than his hometown of Binghamton, New York? Making a difference in his own city would provide a model for cities everywhere, which have become the habitat for over half of the people on earth. Inspired to become an agent of change, Wilson descended on Binghamton with a scientist's eye and looked at its toughest questions, such as how to empower neighborhoods and how best to teach our children. He combined the latest research methods from experimental economics with studies of holiday decorations and garage sales. Drawing upon examples from nature as diverse as water striders, wasps, and crows, Wilson's scientific odyssey took him around the world, from a cave in southern Africa that preserved the dawn of human culture to the Vatican in Rome. Along the way, he spoke with dozens of fellow scientists, whose stories he relates along with his own. Wilson's remarkable findings help us to understand how we must become wise managers of evolutionary processes to accomplish positive change at all scales, from effective therapies for individuals, to empowering neighborhoods, to regulating the worldwide economy. With an ambitious scope that spans biology, sociology, religion, and economics, The Neighborhood Project is a memoir, a practical handbook for improving the quality of life, and an exploration of the big questions long pondered by religious sages, philosophers, and storytellers. Approaching the same questions from an evolutionary perspective shows, as never before, how places define us.

Community

Community PDF Author: Suzanne Keller
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691186669
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
This book tells the story of how a human community comes to be and how aspirations for the good life confront the dilemmas and detours of real life. Suzanne Keller combines penetrating analysis of classic ideas about community with a remarkable and unprecedented thirty-year case study of one of the first "planned unit developments" in America and the first in New Jersey. Twin Rivers, this pioneering venture, featured townhouses and shared spaces for children's play and adult work and play in a society that stresses individual over collective goals and private over public concerns. Hence the timeless questions asked over millennia: How does an aggregate of strangers create an identity of place, shared goals, viable institutions, and a spirit of mutuality and reciprocity? What obstacles stand in the way and how are these overcome? And how does design generate (or deter) community spirit? Inspired by the legacy of Plato, Rousseau, de Tocqueville, and Tönnies, Keller traces the difficult birth and the rich unfolding of Twin Rivers from a former potato field into a vibrant contemporary community. Most community studies remain at a highly descriptive level. This book has both broader and deeper aims, endeavoring to develop principles of the common life as we enter the age of cyberspace. Keller reveals the community of Twin Rivers through a multidimensional social microscope, having monitored the community from the day it opened by participant observation, attitude surveys, the study of collective records, and nearly 1,000 in-depth interviews with homeowners. She offers fascinating insight into how residents maintain privacy, relate to neighbors, cope with social conflict, and develop ideas about the common good. She shows that Twin Rivers residents remain hopeful about the possibility of community despite variable success in achieving their desires. Indeed, she argues that the hard-won experience, more than the utopian ideal, is the true measure of community. Keller concludes that, despite the homogenizing effects of mass communication and globalization, local communities will continue to proliferate in the foreseeable future--due to changing lifestyles and the continuing quest for roots. This important and engaging book will be appreciated by social scientists, architects, physical planners, developers and lenders, and community leaders as well as by the general reader interested in creating a bridge between individualism and community.

Not in My Neighborhood

Not in My Neighborhood PDF Author: Antero Pietila
Publisher: Ivan R. Dee Publisher
ISBN: 9781299444171
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
Baltimore is the setting for (and typifies) one of the most penetrating examinations of bigotry and residential segregation ever published in the United States. Antero Pietila shows how continued discrimination practices toward African Americans and Jews have shaped the cities in which we now live. Eugenics, racial thinking, and white supremacist attitudes influenced even the federal government's actions toward housing in the 20th century, dooming American cities to ghettoization. This all-American tale is told through the prism of Baltimore, from its early suburbanization in the 1880s to the consequences of "white flight" after World War II, and into the first decade of the twenty-first century. The events are real, and so are the heroes and villains. Mr. Pietila's engrossing story is an eye-opening journey into city blocks and neighborhoods, shady practices, and ruthless promoters. -- Book jacket.

Communication and Community

Communication and Community PDF Author: Gregory J. Shepherd
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135672717
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 334

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Book Description
This distinctive volume combines synthetic theoretical essays and reports of original research to address the interrelations of communication and community in a wide variety of settings. Chapters address interpersonal conversation and communal relationships; journalism organizations and political reporting; media use and community participation; communication styles and alternative organizations; and computer networks and community building; among other topics. The contents offer synthetic literature reviews, philosophical essays, reports of original research, theory development, and criticism. While varying in theoretical perspective and research focus, each of the chapters also provides its own approach to the practice of communication and community. In this way, the book provides a recurrent thematic emphasis on the pragmatic consequences of theory and research for the activities of communication and living together in communities. Taken as a whole, this collection illustrates that communication and community cannot be adequately analyzed in any context without considering other contexts, other levels of analysis, and other media and modes of communication. As such, it provides important insights for scholars, students, educators, and researchers concerned with communication across the full range of contexts, media, and modes.

Community Matters

Community Matters PDF Author: Margot Kempers
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780830415687
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Book Description
Community Matters is unique in its use of a contextualized, interactionist approach to analyze the nature and extent of community. Its theoretical discussion of community as process is expanded through the inclusion of arguments raised in political science and philosophy, and is balanced by descriptive analyses of a diverse selection of communities. This book helps bridge the divide between works of academic argument concerning civil society and community life and books explicitly focused on presenting practical information on what is and is not effective in community work. Community Matters shifts attention away from a conceptualization of community as a fixed evolutionary stage identified with specific types of settings, and instead provides numerous illustrations of the dynamic quality of social ties and community life. This book convinces readers that they can and should study community and community matters. A Burnham Publishers book

Cybersociety 2.0

Cybersociety 2.0 PDF Author: Steve Jones
Publisher: SAGE Publications
ISBN: 1452251274
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
Cybersociety 2.0, the new edition of Steven G. Jones′s Cybersociety, is also rooted in criticism and analysis of computer-mediated technologies to assist readers in becoming critically aware of the hype and hopes pinned on computer-mediated communication and the cultures that are emerging among Internet users. Both books are products of a particular moment in time and serve as snapshots of the concerns and issues that surround the burgeoning new technologies of communication. After a brief introduction to the history of computer-mediated communication, each chapter in this volume specifically highlights specific cyber "societies" and how computer-mediated communication effects the notion of self and its relationship to the community. Contributors probe issues of community, standards of conduct, communication, the means of fixing identity, knowledge, information, and the exercise of power in social relations. They also question how traditional sociological inquiry can adapt itself to most effectively study computer-mediated social formations. Both timely and thought-provoking, Cybersociety 2.0 belongs on the bookshelf of students and scholars in fields of communication, popular culture, American studies, and mass communication.