Untitled - socium.ge

218 Keith N. Hampton“blasé attitudes toward deviant or bizarre behaviour,” descriptions that areremarkable in their similarity to what has been reported in the popular pressabout the Internet: “I see people developing a more blasé attitude toward theunthinkable as our information overload increases” (Lactis, 1999). “TheInternet permits us to hide behind a screen rather than interact face to face withother humans. It is isolating individuals who forget what real community is …online communities are increasing the fragmentation of society” (Angsioco,2003). Indeed, descriptions of cyber-life as impersonal, superficial, and transitoryare motivated by the same concern for a loss of densely knit, broadlysupportive, place-based interactions as those that motivated earlier debatesabout urban industrial society.Like the rural to urban transition, the transition to the network society freesthe individual from “the pettiness and prejudices” of traditional “organic” relations(Simmel, 1950). The Internet reduces the friction of space – the time andcost necessary to communicate across distances – from what could beachieved through the technologies of the urban environment (for example, thetrain, automobile, and telephone). A reduction in the friction of space,combined with access to a large, heterogeneous population, facilitates the abilityof individuals to form relations that were previously inaccessible. Nolonger limited to those who are closest at hand, it is increasingly possible toseek out social ties based on shared interest and mutual identification, but notnecessarily shared place. Freedom from the constraints of place providesInternet users with the opportunity to explore aspects of individual identityand interest that previously may have been repressed or lacked a critical massof others.While this extension of “community without propinquity” (Webber, 1963)does not exclude the possibility that people can form social ties based onshared place, it does suggest that similarity of interest is more important informing relations than similarity of setting. Indeed, most of the social supportthat people require to function day to day comes from sources outside the localsetting (Fischer, 1982; Wellman et al., 1988). The failure to consider the possibilitythat ties from outside the local setting could provide supportiveresources led some to conclude that the urban setting was responsible for adecline of community (Wellman, 1979). When communities are defined asinformal ties of sociability, support, and identity, they are rarely neighborhoodsolidarities or even densely knit groups of kin and friends. Communitiesconsist of far-flung kinship, workplace, interest group, and neighborhood tiesthat together form a network of aid, support, and social control. Evidence fromthe study of social networks has shown that, while communities often consistof dispersed relations, people still have strong, supportive communities (for areview, see Wellman, 1999).While concerns for the loss of community are not new, there is evidence to