community -

during yesterday's class, Nigel showed us the loc.alize.us website and try to convey us that there could be all different sort of ways of defining a virtual community: they are alot of photographs mapped out on a satellite map to show their actual location in the world, cross a spectrum of time, uploaded by different people. could this be a community? of people who are committed to using the application and contributing their photographs to this growing archive? this example make me realised a virtual community could be without any definition of sexuality (like queeruption does) or similar musical tastes (like myspace does) or don't have to be actual friends that related in the reality (like facebook does) technology, in this case, seems to cross the bridge of social confinement and erase the importance of identity.








However, if community is simply a social grouping, it can be anybody in a same room without any communication or exchange of emotion. is that a community?





"we know the healing effect of community in terms of individual lives. " M. Scott Peck
The Different Drum: Community-Making and Peace





I would say it is not easy, even in the society we live in, to have a community of people who willing to share their time, knowledge etc. it requires efforts. But I think loc.alize.us lack of a function of community, or loc.alize.us might be just an extension/accessory of a online community.


Howard Rheingold define 'The Virtual Community' as 'People who use computers to communicate, form friendships that sometimes form the basis of communities, but you have to be careful to not mistake the tool for the task and think that just writing words on a screen is the same thing as real community.'" Howard Rheingold's book is interesting, i will dig into that.



ahhh.... and something else, about the poet Rumi, a 13th Century Persian. a research was conducted to asked a group of about fifty participants to define why Rumi meant so much to them. their responses in 12 distinct categories which are listed below with explanation.

1- Non-Intellectual: They found Rumi to cater to their hearts, emotions and instincts rather than intellects.
2- Levels: They found many levels in Rumi’s poetry. The more they learned about Rumi, the more they appreciated his depth and were encouraged to dig deeper.
3- Unity: They found the sense of unity and universal siblinghood in Rumi’s poetry to be very attractive.
4- Friend: They found him to be a friend.
5- Personal Process: Reading Rumi for them is a personal process. They associate themselves with him.
6- Grace Descending: Every time a Rumi poem was recited they felt Grace descending.
7- Longing: They associated with the sense of longing in Rumi’s poems.
8- Love Affair: Rumi was like a lover to some of the participants.
9- Cultural Bridge: They found Rumi to form a cultural bridge for the Persians, Turks, Afghanis and the Arabs in this country. Through Rumi some Middle & Near Eastern people found a new acceptance in the U.S.
10- They Don’t Even Like Poetry: Some expressed that they don’t even like poetry but they love reading Rumi poems.
11- Participate in the Process: They found Rumi extremely expressive and found themselves participating in Rumi’s own process.
12- Spiritual Guide: They found Rumi to be a spiritual guide for them.

Rumi is said to be very popular in America, I think even a piece of writing can be significant, and be the base of a community. because people feel connected through that. but how about bibles, and other religious writings?... i think maybe i am going to far. nenglish.

In last week, we learnt how to use Textbook to create a HTML document. so we created a web page from scratch. I wasn't familiar with writing the code at all, I had always choose the lazy way of using Dreamweaver. I am amazed how simple the syntax of HTML is. and I learnt how to put video files on a webpage.

We also created a group Wiki page. our group is called DEKN, you can find us here http://dekn.pbwiki.com

our main topic is online community. we will draw both Myspace.com and queeruption.org as our examples. we thought it is a interesting comparison of different kind of communities online, and of different aims these communities try to achive via new media technology.

firstly, our group would like search for ideas of what is "community". and we will see how it is different from online community.

then we will use the example of Myspace and queeruption as example. we thought that it is the contrast between commercial/non-commercial narcisism/comformity

the mission statement on queeruption website makes it very clear what they want to do and how they like to use the interenet to communicate:

Mission Statement:

What we're doing and why

We want to make an internationally relevant Website where alternative/radical/disenfranchised queers can exchange information, network, organise, inspire and be inspired, self represent, challenge ourselves and each other, and learn about DIY ideas and ethics. We hope this site will convey the diversity of queer life, identity, and politics; provide visibility for a definition of queer that confounds and contradicts the limited representation of the "normal"/consumerist model; and be an active tool for building community that recognises the differences in queerness globally.

The goals of the site are:

*To be a home base for information about past, present, and future Queeruption gatherings.
*To be a major networking tool for radical queer people and groups.
*To be a central site for information and resource sharing among queer activists.
*To provide organising tools and inspiration for people who want to organise locally as well as internationally.

In order to meet these goals the site should be:

*Up to date.
*Inclusive, not exclusive.
*Multi-lingual.
*Technologically accessible -- i.e., quick to load and easy to navigate.
*More about participation and creation by and for queer community and less about editorial oversight.

From queeruption.org

two assignments for this applied study
1. group wiki: should write about group research project: people in the group; the research topic; decision making process;
2. personal blog: a reflective dairy of what I have learnt compares to what i already know before...

where am I coming from?
I use to play with animation, graphic, film editing programs alot. and had too much coffee, and bad health. I use to design graphic based websites, but hate to mentain them. I use to be very geeky and excitied by computer learning, but my learning got stucked when i try to learn programing and database stuff, because i don't have the basic training of computer coding. I was facinated by computer art like this http://www.levitated.net/p5/chamber/ - a program written in simple code but can draw amazing images, grow organic structure. but I got bored with these kind of art after a while. because I can't find deeper meaning to it. (its time to become a traveler to experience the real world! ;D )

what I want to learn from the class?
see how it goes...

what I have learnt from the first class?
the potencial of internet social network. ... the population of Myspace is bigger then any country in the world. I waste so much time online doing facebook/myspace/livejournal, feel guilty to even think about it. how i can use internet communication more effciently? i mean... i want to do useful things like check gardien online or bbc online radio or doing interesting things such as constructing a online book full of jokes... but never get my head around to do it.
computer teching is more then about using tools.... it more about how the tools can be more useful for us....

the first blog entry

Blogging is a myth. some can get rich from managing a good blog and sale things on it.

I set up this blog for my course assignment.

I had 2 blogs before. One is livejournal, and I don't update it regularly. i'm amazed by those people who can write amazing stuff and up-load their blogs regulraly.

My mom has a blog too. she doesn't update it at all.




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wiki, who are on the group, what we doing

blog, what i am doing. what i want to learn from the course and so on....