Internet Literacy Enables Community Development

In the 1990's we expected that a cyber community would develop, and Howard Rheingold wrote "Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution" and pointed to a cooperative community process on the Internet. Online communities have defied predictions.

There have been some brave attempts to create "online communities" with GeoCities being notable. (2012: A link to GeoCities has been removed, it no longer exists.) Yahoo Groups is another survivor from the early days of the internet. New comers are social places like "My Space" and many other sites that mainly focus on dating. There are also business focused social spaces like "Xing" and "Ryze". (2012: Ryze still struggles on, but is a shadow of it's former self.) (There are 100+ others) Perhaps slightly different is "Linked In" which is more like a yellow pages for personal CV's. (2012: LinkedIn has developed to be much more than that.)

We might also note here the success of certain ideas that were promoted on the internet. Most notable is the
"Cluetrain Manifesto" but also many other documents like for instance "The Earth Charter".

Choosing a Future
What will people making free choices choose to do? Will they use widespread access to the Internet to become terrorists or criminals or to trade pornographic images or to encourage a rebellion? They might just do that. But far more likely, where hope exists, people will try to learn about things that interest them, they will improve their language skills, they will learn about other people, they will learn some technical skills, they will learn some things they can use and apply in their daily lives.

Learn by Doing Learning Process Reading and Writing Infomation Literacy Information Practices Community Development Full length version of this page	In the 1990's we expected that a cyber community would develop, and Howard Rheingold wrote "Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution" and pointed to a cooperative community process on the Internet. Online communities have defied predictions. There have been some brave attempts to create "online communities" with GeoCities being notable. (2012: A link to GeoCities has been removed, it no longer exists.) Yahoo Groups is another survivor from the early days of the internet. New comers are social places like "My Space" and many other sites that mainly focus on dating. There are also business focused social spaces like "Xing" and "Ryze". (2012: Ryze still struggles on, but is a shadow of it's former self.) (There are 100+ others) Perhaps slightly different is "Linked In" which is more like a yellow pages for personal CV's. (2012: LinkedIn has developed to be much more than that.) We might also note here the success of certain ideas that were promoted on the internet. Most notable is the "Cluetrain Manifesto" but also many other documents like for instance "The Earth Charter". Choosing a Future What will people making free choices choose to do? Will they use widespread access to the Internet to become terrorists or criminals or to trade pornographic images or to encourage a rebellion? They might just do that. But far more likely, where hope exists, people will try to learn about things that interest them, they will improve their language skills, they will learn about other people, they will learn some technical skills, they will learn some things they can use and apply in their daily lives.	Tribal Meeting in Nigeria Traditional ways of making decisions.
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