After today, it feels like there needs to be some tense the represents a superposition of plural and singular to assign to the word "community" when referring to our budding Cadre 12. We exist as a singular community, defined by a set of individuals that belong to our cadre and, currently, by a shared location in space. I'm coming to realize, though, that this community will be different depending on the modality through which we interact with it. There'll be the community we interact with asynchronously, the one we interact with in synchrony, and the one we'll remember interacting with here at VirtCamp. My concern is that the community will feel like multiple communities rather than the same one through different colored lenses.
One of my favorite internet philosophers suggests the following explanation for many problem cases within online communities:
- We all seem to be exceptional individuals, or at least far from normal ;-)
- We're losing anonymity pretty quickly here at VirtCamp
- Our primary audience is our cadre, therefore small
I've little doubt that we'll keep things respectful and intelligent once we transition to working online with each other. I just hope that when we get down to the meat of the program, the various modalities through which we communicate will feel like the same old community in a slightly altered format.
