EXERCISE: How Do You Make A Mirror A Community?

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

original posting: Mon, 25 Jun 2001 05:47:05 -0400

Always interesting, and more often than not a bit challenging...

Taking the technological simplicity of listserv (join the list, get copies of postings, and repeat!  Simple, no?) and somehow trying to hang our humanity (or perhaps our inhumanity?) on that web of bits.

How do you think community forms in f2f (face-to-face) groups?  What does it take to turn a melange of strangers into someone that you would trust to comment on your writing?  How do you define the edges of the motley crowd?  Or do you need to?

And then, if you will, contemplate a bit on what the electronic parallels might be.  Remember that the owner of this list has some other things to do, that all the participants gathered here are volunteers, and that no one has to do anything in this collation of imagery and light.

Something to contemplate on a lazy Sunday afternoon.

(what does this have to do with writing?  Welladay, if one considers writing as being something that happens between and betwixt some people -- at least a writer and a reader? -- then perhaps considering the ins-and-outs of list formulation might aid that.  Even if one focuses a bit finer, perhaps the way that people think and form communities might inform your writing, eh?  Or, if you want to, you might do a piece based on the odd little interactions out here on the edge of cyberspace -- just don't call it "You've Got Mail" okay?)

Oh -- if you want to franticulate about how a list like this might best be a writers' workshop, feel free!  That's always a fascinating gear to grind.

(Franticulate?  Frantic speculation, I suspect, although it might also be be articulating frantics?)

"My great mistake, the fault for which I can't forgive myself, is that one day I ceased my obstinate pursuit of my own individuality" Oscar Wilde