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From: randolph@cognito.Eng.Sun.COM (Randolph Fritz)
Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk
Subject: Re: The city of mind, cyberpunks, and privacy
Summary: Cities and communities
Message-ID: <5532@exodus.Eng.Sun.COM>
Date: 9 Jan 91 03:32:17 GMT
References: <5201@exodus.Eng.Sun.COM> <13765@milton.u.washington.edu> <1991Jan5.182759.11714@alphalpha.com>
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Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mt. View, Ca.
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Kee Hinckley writes:

  What the City metaphor misses completely, and the Frontier metaphor
  only gets to a limited extent is the sense of _community_ on the
  net.  It's the kind of thing where a complete stranger comes up and
  asks you a favor (last night it was a phone call asking for a Usenet
  feed) and you don't think twice about helping out.

Hmmmm.  Depends on the neighborhood, I think.  There are (or used to
be) city neighborhoods where helping strangers was the norm.  And they
used to be called communities.  Our newer car-oriented cities don't
develop this kind of community, since they are designed to discourage
casual social contact.  And, of course, very wealthy and very
dangerous neighborhoods have different sorts of community.

Continuing the metaphor we might consider the tax-supported and
privately-owned networks to be the analogs of wealthy neighborhoods --
they do not offer courtesy services.  And true renegade networks (if
any exist) would be too concerned with self-defense to offer courtesy.

By the way, "civil" is derived from Latin roots meaning city.  So
"civilizing" bears something in common with city building.

[My usual sig isn't available . . .]

__Randolph Fritz  sun!eng!randolph || randolph@eng.sun.com