Two disparaging claims often made about online world are that it is inhibited with nerds who don't have a life and that 30 years old woman you met and liked is actually a 13 year old boy. Both have a basis in fact. Some pioneering message-board addicts were in reality socially challenged hackers, and lot of 13 year old boys probably don't have confidence to confess up to their true civil state online.But time for convenient generalizations about population of online world is past. It's in its Devonian era now, swarming with rapidly evolving forms that may or may not survive. Except for only partly successful efforts of private services to ensure civility and proprietary, online intercourse is unregulated. This is Golden Age.
The first thing that surprises a new visitor to online world is its warmth. You find in people there is a reservoir of benevolence that in 3D world would be ringed about by a fence of caution. The immateriality of online experience removes caution; kindness is there to be taken. A new voice in a forum is greeted by a chorus of welcome. Ask a question and a dozen voices answer.
If you know how to make your way around Internet, astonishing vistas open up. You post a query: "Where can I find spy satellite images?" The next evening, answer is there: 14 percent. As likely as not, respondent is an Internet professor of medieval history, tapping at his keyboard with enthusiasm of a kid at video game. Of course, it could be a kid pretending to be NSA's expert on Arial Intelligence.
I'm interested in Cybernetics, and I often visit a forum on Usenet, a veritable town hall of conversation and information on cybernetic engineering. There I regularly see postings from a man I will call Baker. Baker works deep in bowels of theoretical cybernetic establishments. He's busy. But there he is, again, and again answering questions, simple or sophisticated, from strangers. I posted him a message: "Where do you find time?"
"I need social contact," came his answer. "I don't get it at office". This triggered an odd thought: Did all socially inhibited Cybernetic wizards at office, silent or stammering when they encounter one another at coffee machine, perhaps have colorful online lives where they become social super-heroes, donning tights to wage war on ignorance and isolation? Maybe so
Removing usual cues of appearance, dress, accent and manners uncovers people's natural gregariousness. We are, after all, social animals and feeling of community arises spontaneously in us. The emotional content of message creates a sense of place where a human presence can be felt. The result of being surrounded by living souls without visible form is a wonderful sense of liberalization.
People bare themselves online as they rarely do in life. Far from resembling a series of dry telegrams or office memos, online communications drip with blood, sweat and tears. You encounter, now and again, touchingly eloquent messages, stripped of pretense; all human life - and death - is there. Community is a complex experience. It combines sense of belonging with its all-too-frequent counterpart, need to exclude. Acceptance and ostracism have same strength online as off.
Anonymity is one of hot issues in any discussion for online world. There are profoundly bitter and angry people online, just as there are boundlessly generous and amiable ones. Certainly there are virtual vandals, mad bombers and serial killers online as off. The anonymity that protects recipient of a message from physical harm protects its sender from detection. You won't participate in a cat lovers' forum for long without some nut posting a message about torturing cats.