Agre and designing new media for communities
Near the end of his article, Agre asks the question of how an authentic community voice can be maintained and how a community’s collective cognition can be designed to be immune to corruption by advertisers and other outside interested parties. With the advent and explosion of blogs and forums on the Net (and media which access it) in which communities have greater control over their creation and maintainance, as well as a wider range of what is allowable in its internal discourse, is Agre’s concern less warranted? Or is the potential for misinformation and cooptation of communities greater without the mediation of a controlling (but almost certainly biased) central entity?
January 23rd, 2006 at 10:18 pm
I think you’re right to highlight this; it’s worth noting that the article dates back agood decade in its original form, and asking how different the ‘net that Agre describes is from today’s.