Seriously, an interesting article which takes perhaps too long to
tell us what perhaps we already knew - the Internet is not a utopia
where everyone is equal and shares everything.
The subject is weblogs, but it could be applied to really most
network technologies (or perhaps more pertinently, web technologies).
The essence of the argument is diversity plus freedom of choice
creates inequality: "A new social system starts, and seems
delightfully free of the elitism and cliquishness of the existing
systems. Then, as the new system grows, problems of scale set in. Not
everyone can participate in every conversation. Not everyone gets to
be heard. Some core group seems more connected than the rest of us,
and so on."
http://www.shirky.com/writings/powerlaw_weblog.html
Not quite collaborative practice, but given the traditional idealist
Internet ethos, perhaps relevant to the notion of networks as
collaborative or communally constructed social spaces.
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Chris Byrne [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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New Media Scotland tel: +44 131 477 3774
P.O. Box 23434, Edinburgh EH7 5SZ fax: +44 131 477 3775
Scotland, UK http://www.mediascot.org
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