Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience by
Yi-Fu Tuan ©1977. Google book preview (partial text).
Is an online community a place? What is place, what gives a place its identity, how do its residents and outsiders recognize it?
One of the themes Yi-Fu Tuan writes on is the relation of space and place.
"Space" is more abstract than "place." In experience, the meaning of space often merges with that of place. What begins as undifferentiated space becomes place as we get to know it better and endow it with value. Place is security, space is freedom: we are attached to the one and long for the other
.
Is the ether 'space,' and are virtual communities 'place?'
The Great Good Place: Cafés, Coffee shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community by
Ray Oldenburg ©1999. Google book preview (partial text).
Ray Oldenburg proposes in
The Great Good Place, there are three essential places in people's lives: the place we live, the place we work, and the place we gather for conviviality.
Third places exist on neutral ground and serve to level their guests to a condition of social equality. Within these places, conversation is the primary activity and the major vehicle for the display and appreciation of human personality and individuality. Third places are taken for granted and most have a low profile. Since the formal institutions of society make stronger claims on the individual, third places are normally open in the off hours, as well as at other times. The character of a third place is determined most of all by its regular clientele and is marked by a playful mood, which contrasts with people's more serious involvement in other spheres. Though a radically different kind of setting for a home, the third place is remarkably similar to a good home in the psychological comfort and support that it extends.
Virtual Community:Homesteading on the Electric Frontier by
Howard Rheingold ©1993. Online version of the book.
Perhaps cyberspace is one of the informal public places where people can rebuild the aspects of community that were lost when the malt shop became a mall. Or perhaps cyberspace is precisely the wrong
place to look for the rebirth of community, offering not a tool for conviviality but a life-denying simulacrum of real passion and true commitment to one another. In either case, we need to find out soon.
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