Tardy Prompt

So, in the spirit of keeping some kind of online discussion of the readings going (thanks to all of you who have contributed and continue to do so), I'm going to propose some topics for consideration with respect to the readings on online community. First of all, I think it might be helpful for us to outline the realms of ambivalence. Rheingold frames this in terms of the panopticon vs. the electronic agora, Robins and Fernback offer two critiques of the deployment of the promise of online community. Rheingold is perhaps the easier target -- anyone interested in defending him in terms more nuanced than his own? What might the autonomist perspective we've been exploring have to say about the way in which Rheingold frames his tale of online community? How might the type of promises he invokes by rearticulated or recast in their terms in useful ways (if at all)? Can we use the discussion of alienation to shed light on his version of online community and the critiques to which it might be subjected? Virtual community feels like such a 90s concept -- what does it have, if anything, to contribute to the discourses on social networking and web 2.0?