Real vs Virtual Community

The "Virtual"

(written in 1995,  as part of my DMin project which I never finished,  due to my moving and taking a job that sapped my energies from any outside work.....in retrospect,  my job with a religious publishing House should have encouraged me to continue,  for tehir own benefit as well as mine,  if they had been "with it" in regards to anticipating needing some insights into how people experience and engage in religiosity/spirtuality online)

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Howard Rheingold's The Virtual Community seems to have been the pivotal book which started the debates about whether or not it is possible to experience community online. Critics say it is "pseudo-community"; that we don't really know who we're talking to, and that relationships cannot blossom online. There is an assumption that people are giving up "real world" relationships by going online.

But there is considerable question that there is all that much of that "good old face to face" going on. Certainly less of this is happening in many quarters in our society as we move along in the direction we've been heading. There seems to be a loss of community, but I would place more of the blame for this on the generalized "electronic entertainment" society before computer communications ever became the popular activity it has been lately.

If the scriptures tell us that "Now we see in a mirror darkly", how far is that from telling us that the writers were aware of a deep chasm in real life ("RL" is the online shorthand)or face to face life ("ftf") that was indicative of the relational distance we still experience and are called upon bridge in our journeys? Since the beginning of time, people have not seen each other "face to face". We often fight alienation form one another. This is basically the norm, and we spend much emotional and psychic energy seeking to understand the differences between us, and the ability to understand one another well enough. But then they say, "Then we shall know face to face", placing this task of "seeing each other face to face" as a thing to grow with as we move on down life's path; they are telling us that this is the ultimate goal, not something we can "master". "Then" is a matter of hope, one toward which we are ever straining and striving to achieve.

Now it is here that I have a problem with the "Anti-Net" sentiment expressed by what seem to me to be "old guard" members of the literati. Their allegiance to the "old forms" gets in the way of their seeing the possibilities for this medium of CMC. And their idea of what is "real" and what is "virtual" has become confused by a materialistic view of reality, and a media driven impression of "virtual reality".

David Lochhead has written an article, Living in Virtual Un/reality , which expresses something which all these critics of "Virtual Community" and "Virtual Reality" have entirely missed. First is the notion that "Virtual Community" is not any kind of community, and that "real" communities (the RL ones, whichever ones we identify as having the character of community) are always superior to the "Virtual" ones. Well, I say they're not; not always. Often, it can be just the opposite. And the verse from the Love chapter of I Corinthians helps us to understand why.

That we now "see in a glass darkly" is witness to the incompletion of relationships in ANY age, not just this technological era. "Then" we shall see face to face has a deeper meaning than the "ftf" of online speak. "Face to face" is communicating the ultimate goal of it all; the goal of community and oneness with God and our purpose in the world. The next phrase expounds further: "Now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also am fully known". Reaching a level of relationship that is closer to what God intended (should I say "virtually" what God intended?) is the goal; but there are numerous stumbling blocks in our present society's condition (and always have been). All any persons in any age have been able to do is to work within the communicative context in which they find themselves, and use any opportunity or resource they have in the quest to improve and grow our relationships with each other and the world.

Sherry Turkle , author of Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet has seen both ends of the spectrum of physical to virtual. As a Social Psychologist, she emphasizes the need to utilize all the tools at our disposal to enhance our relationships:

When a new technology is powerful enough, it causes a period of disruption, when a lot of things are up for grabs. For example , with the explosion of online life, we see people preoccupied with how we should think about identity, authenticity, and physical presence. Some people start to talk as though we are already in some idealized digital future, while others fear that we are being "sucked into" virtual reality. The former group tends to devalue the past; the latter group tends to wax nostalgic about a golden age that never was -- when people were completely "present" to each other in direct, transparent communities. Between the hypes and the fears, between people saying we're already in the future and people longing for the past, I believe we are missing something really splendid about where we actually are. (p.310, Digerati)

The challenge is to build a life that embraces all of the possibilities for relating to each other. (ibid)

New technologies are rich with possibilities. Our job is to use our self-understanding to exploit them in the way that most enhances our lives. (p.312, Digerati)

The fear is of making too many of our encounters into transactions. This may be progress on one dimension but an important step back on another. But each technology needs time to develop as a medium that enhances the experience of people. In my family, my grandparents used the telephone for emergencies and my parents used it to do routine business and make plans. I used it as an extension of my social an emotional communication.

With computer-mediated communication, things are moving very quickly. We are only now developing the fora and the people able to turn this medium to the richest purposes.

Paul wrote I Corinthians as a letter, a technology in itself; an extension of the human methods of communication. In ways, the letter was more effective in its impact than if he had spoken these words to the people himself, for out of the "multiple copy circulation" of the letter, additional communities were able to benefit from the spiritual insight Paul was experiencing in that moment. In fact, in the early days of the rapid spread of culture (and mostly Greek culture due to the fact that the roads and mediums of mass communication were Roman), Paul's adoption of this "virtual presence" was a major factor in allowing the Christian movement to spread and develop a sense of cultural identity. Could we perhaps say that the roots of the church are in "Virtual Communication"?

So we have , in Christian history, a perfect example of the way the technology of writing, and later print (which allowed unprecedented expansion of books and writings), allows a moment's glimpse of divine purpose to be ""extended" into time, and drawn upon for the edification of others in many places , and in different times. But we have seen also in this history the rapid association of the earlier medium with the message itself. The book, the medium that allowed collections of writings to be distributed together, became endowed with an authority between its two covers, so that some "stories" of value to us were "lost" (not preserved) and others still to come were passed over because of our distraction to "re-interpreting" the old.

I see a valuble activity in "re-intepreting"; after all, Jesus did a lot of it with the Old Testament and the prevailing Jewish applications of existing books of the Law. But Jesus also told new stories which shed light on his day, and gave his hearers new images that were alive with relevance and connected with the understandings of his culture.He also knew how to reach across his Jewish culture to embrace the "others"; and to embrace even those who were shunned by it. It is this dynamic nature of Jesus' reach that convinces me of the complexity of the communication event; and how there are many avenues available to us as a communicating people which can serve to "supplement" our world of relationships.

Whether I am face to face with someone, on the phone, writing a letter, sending email, or composing a Web page that I hope any particular individual might read, I am involved in supplementing the relationship. In some cases, the online relationship may be used most often, escpecially when the geography separates us. Even in the same city, the pace of our lifestyles, and the "obligations" we have set for ourselves seem to have us increasingly on the go. I have seen the effect of the fast pace on the church, and I feel the sense of loss from what I have known in former times of community and common journey. But I will not let the pace or the general flow in which we all live throw me off track. I still sense a call to something more; something still "then"; something ahead, or within our grasp.

The alternative context of Computer Commuications allows a different feel to "interaction". Physical cues that aid some aspects of communication also squelch other important inclinations; we are all "intimidated" socially in different ways, and in different contexts. CMC changes the playing field in some ways that can be key to helping some people open up more easily, give encouragement more naturally, or voice an opinion more effectively. Just as in "real life", sometimes this works the opposite for others. It is a new, not neccessarily bad, but different ballgame online.

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© Copyright 2003 Dale Lature. Last update: 9/23/2003; 3:35:06 PM.