My Beef with Robins

In an earlier post, I accused Robins of being reductionist and light on evidence. I'm obviously obligated to explain myself.

1. I think Robins unfairly characterizes the Internet=Good camp's position as a straw man argument. On the 4th page of his article he writes: "this simplistic discourse on distance (bad) and intimacy (good) has been able to present itself as the foundation for a broader social and political vision." He goes on further to say on the 6th page: "virtual communitarians...consider geographical determination and situation to have been the fundamental sources of frustration and limitation in human life."

This is a little like treating the symptoms and not the disease...the underlying impulse to connect online is to connect. Sure, people may come together based on a common interest initially, but there exist a variety of perspectives on that common topic. And let's not forget that people don't live their entire day inside that topic. Much more of their day is taken up by everything else in their lives (work, family, location, etc.) that makes them different from the strangers at a distance.

2. Robins also suggests that the Net Gushers (to borrow from Larissa) end up in a bland gob of similarity and argues in favor of a "democratic culture...founded on the differences and distances between strangers" (11th page). I think Rheingold and others would say that difference and distance remain intact. Rheingold gives examples of heated debate and face-to-face meetings with WELLites who turn out to be very different from him, and who remain different, their WELL-based familiarity notwithstanding. They do, in fact, retain the "otherness" Robins champions. In addition, Rheingold gives examples of democratic deliberation (Big Sky, SHWASHLOCK) that demonstrate the coming together of diverse perspectives on a common topic. Furthermore, the barn-raising he describes (as well as some that I have experienced) also keep distance and "passage" alive and well. That the members of his online community were able to converge and help out their fellow member who was ill halfway around the world is amazing because of the distance, not in spite of it.

Okay, I think that's two cents worth...see you in class.