Virtual Community
A virtual community is a social network of individuals who connect through specific social media, potentially crossing geographical and political boundaries in order to pursue mutual interests or goals. Some of the most pervasive virtual communities are online communities operating under social networking services. Howard Rheingold discussed virtual communities in his book, '' The Virtual Community'', published in 1993. The book's discussion ranges from Rheingold's adventures on The WELL, computer-mediated communication, social groups and information science. Technologies cited include Usenet, MUDs (Multi-User Dungeon) and their derivatives MUSHes and MOOs, Internet Relay Chat (IRC), chat rooms and electronic mailing lists. Rheingold also points out the potential benefits for personal psychological well-being, as well as for society at large, of belonging to a virtual community. At the same time, it showed that job engagement positively influences virtual communities of practice ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Social Network
A social network is a social structure made up of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), sets of dyadic ties, and other social interactions between actors. The social network perspective provides a set of methods for analyzing the structure of whole social entities as well as a variety of theories explaining the patterns observed in these structures. The study of these structures uses social network analysis to identify local and global patterns, locate influential entities, and examine network dynamics. Social networks and the analysis of them is an inherently interdisciplinary academic field which emerged from social psychology, sociology, statistics, and graph theory. Georg Simmel authored early structural theories in sociology emphasizing the dynamics of triads and "web of group affiliations". Jacob Moreno is credited with developing the first sociograms in the 1930s to study interpersonal relationships. These approaches were mathematically formalize ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Melvin Webber
Melvin M. Webber ( Hartford, Connecticut, May 6, 1920 – Berkeley, November 25, 2006) was an urban designer and theorist associated for most of his career with the University of California at Berkeley but whose work was internationally important. He was a director of the university's Transportation Center, an author of classic theoretical papers and of major consulting reports, and an active contributor to debates on transportation policy, regional development and planning theory. His most important work was in the 1960s & 1970s when he pioneered thinking about cities of the future, adapted for the age of telecommunications and mass automotive mobility. These would not be concentric clusters as in the past but urban-associational areas. Webber's 1964 paper ''Urban Place and the Non-Place Urban Realm'' set the terms for much of his later work and introduced the idea of 'community without propinquity': cities that were clusters of settlements with the urban realm of its occupants be ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Massachusetts Institute Of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the most prestigious and highly ranked academic institutions in the world. Founded in response to the increasing industrialization of the United States, MIT adopted a European polytechnic university model and stressed laboratory instruction in applied science and engineering. MIT is one of three private land grant universities in the United States, the others being Cornell University and Tuskegee University. The institute has an urban campus that extends more than a mile (1.6 km) alongside the Charles River, and encompasses a number of major off-campus facilities such as the MIT Lincoln Laboratory, the Bates Center, and the Haystack Observatory, as well as affiliated laboratories such as the Broad and Whitehead Institutes. , 98 ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Sherry Turkle
Sherry Turkle (born June 18, 1948) is the Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She obtained an BA in social studies and later a PhD in sociology and personality psychology at Harvard University. She now focuses her research on psychoanalysis and human-technology interaction. She has written several books focusing on the psychology of human relationships with technology, especially in the realm of how people relate to computational objects. Her latest book 'Empathy Diaries' her memoir received fair critical reviews. Writings In ''The Second Self'', she writes about how computers are not tools as much as they are a part of our social and psychological lives, writing that technology "catalyzes changes not only in what we do but in how we think.” She goes on using Jean Piaget's psychology discourse to discuss how children learn about computers and how this affects their minds. ''The Second ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Lisa Nakamura
Lisa Nakamura is an American professor of media and cinema studies, Asian American studies, and gender and women’s studies.University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. Asian American Studies. She teaches at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where she is also the Coordinator of Digital Studies and the Gwendolyn Calvert Baker Collegiate Professor in the Department of American Cultures. Education Nakamura earned a B.A. from Reed College and a Ph.D. in English from the Graduate Center at City University of New York. Career From 2007 to 2012, Nakamura held positions at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign as a professor in the Institute of Communication Research, a professor of Media and Cinema Studies, a professor of Asian American Studies, and the Director of the Asian American Studies Program. Her main areas of contribution are in interrogating the racial/ethnic assumptions embedded in the representations of race in digital media, particularly within gaming cultur ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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MCI Communications
MCI Communications Corp. (originally Microwave Communications, Inc.) was a telecommunications company headquartered in Washington, D.C. that was at one point the second-largest long-distance provider in the United States. MCI was instrumental in legal and regulatory changes that led to the breakup of the Bell System and introduced competition in the telephone industry. Its MCI Mail, launched in 1983, was one of the first Email services and its MCI.net was an integral part of the Internet backbone. The company was acquired by WorldCom (later called MCI Inc.) in 1998. History Founding MCI was founded as Microwave Communications, Inc. on October 3, 1963, with John D. Goeken being named the company's first president. The initial business plan was for the company to build a series of microwave radio relay stations between Chicago, Illinois, and St. Louis, Missouri. The relay stations would then be used to interface with limited-range two-way radios used by truckers along U.S. R ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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The Wealth Of Networks
''The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom'' is a book by Harvard Law School professor Yochai Benkler published by Yale University Press on April 3, 2006. The book has been recognized as one of the most influential works of its time concerning the rise and impact of the Internet on the society, particularly in the sphere of economics. It also helped popularize the term Benkler coined few years earlier, the commons-based peer production (CBPP). A PDF of the book is downloadable under a Creative Commons Noncommercial Sharealike license. Benkler has said that his editable online book is "an experiment of how books might be in the future", demonstrating how authors and readers might connect instantly or even collaborate. Summary Part 1: The Networked Information Economy Benkler describes the current epoch as a "moment of opportunity" due to the emergence of what he terms the Networked Information Economy (NIE), a "technological-economic feas ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Online Volunteering
Virtual volunteering refers to volunteer activities completed, in whole or in part, using the Internet and a home, school, telecenter, or work computer or other Internet-connected device, such as a smartphone or a tablet. Virtual volunteering is also known as online volunteering, remote volunteering or e-volunteering. Contributing to free and open source software projects or editing Wikipedia are examples of virtual volunteering. In practice In one study, over 70 percent of online volunteers chose assignments requiring one to five hours a week and nearly half chose assignments lasting 12 weeks or less. Some organizations offer online volunteering opportunities which last from ten minutes to an hour. A unique feature of online volunteering is that it can be done from a distance. People with restricted mobility or other special needs participate in ways that might not be possible in traditional face-to-face volunteering. Likewise, online volunteering may allow people to overcome s ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Privacy
Privacy (, ) is the ability of an individual or group to seclude themselves or information about themselves, and thereby express themselves selectively. The domain of privacy partially overlaps with security, which can include the concepts of appropriate use and protection of information. Privacy may also take the form of bodily integrity. The right not to be subjected to unsanctioned invasions of privacy by the government, corporations, or individuals is part of many countries' privacy laws, and in some cases, constitutions. The concept of universal individual privacy is a modern concept primarily associated with Western culture, particularly British and North American, and remained virtually unknown in some cultures until recent times. Now, most cultures recognize the ability of individuals to withhold certain parts of personal information from wider society. With the rise of technology, the debate regarding privacy has shifted from a bodily sense to a digital sense. As the ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Culture Code
Cultural code refers to several related concepts about the body of shared practices, expectations and conventions specific to a given domain of a culture Culture () is an umbrella term which encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities, and habits of the individuals in these groups .... Under one interpretation, a cultural code is seen as defining a set of images that are associated with a particular group of stereotypes in our minds. This is sort of cultural unconscious, which is hidden even from our own understanding, but is also seen in our actions. The cultural codes of a nation helps to understand the behavioral responses characteristic of that nation's citizens. The key codes in understanding specific behaviors differentiate between religion, gender, relationships, money, food, health, and cultures.Clotaire R. The Culture Code: An Ingenious Way to Understa ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |