Episode 56: Exploring Virtual Communities with Howard Rheingold and Patricia G. Lange

And we have a new one for you How Do You Like it So Far? crew! This week Henry and Colin are joined by Howard Rheingold, author of Tools for Thought, Smart Mobs, Net Smart: How to Thrive Online, and who is credited with creating the term the “virtual community” in his 1993 book, and Patricia G. Lange, author of Thanks for Watching: An Anthropological Study of Video Sharing on YouTube and Kids on YouTube: Technical Identities and Digital Literacies and an anthropologist and associate professor of critical studies and visual and critical studies at California College of the Arts. They discuss their experiences in the online world from the 1980s to today. Through their research, they dive deep into the early world of the Internet and how the idea of community was forged through bulletin board systems from the dial-up era. They also discuss how early YouTubers were marginalized for their work which spurred their involvement in community-creation on the Web. Lange posits that, “YouTube wasn’t a website, but a state of mind,” in her recent book while Howard discusses online communities as places that enable people to connect who share interests and important social affordances. Rheingold and Lange look at how the large social media and tech companies that are changing the public spaces of the internet. When Rheingold wrote Net Smart 10 years ago, he wanted to teach the public “crap detection” skills which might help them process the unreliable information circulating online. In today’s era of “fake news” and “alternative facts,” these skills remain vital for the health of our civic life. Patricia’s work encourages an environmental approach understanding how and why people are making and sharing media as part of the ongoing lives of their families and communities. Listen in as Rheingold and Lange discuss their hopes for the future of these public spaces.