Live from the George Ignatieff theatre at U of T, it's the Barry Wellman talk about the Internet in Everyday Life. I couldn't find it, it was located around the corner. Of course, I've never been to this part of U of T, I'm located in the Bahen Centre. The room is getting packed. I see a whole bunch of cameras so maybe this lecture is going to be recorded by ePresence. Everyone is getting a copy of the slides from the lecture. This lecture is a long version of the talk that Barry presented at my CASCON workshop on Social Computing Best Practices.
Barry Wellman is the S.D. Clark Chair in Sociology. The first S.D. Clark chair is giving an introduction to the S.D. Clark lectures in the Faculty of Arts and Science at U of T. He is talking about Barry's accomplishments and achievements. He is being broadcast by video since he is not at U of T but travelling. This is the 8th S.D. Clark lecture, and Barry is the new incumbent as S.D. Clark chair.
Barry is starting the talk. The Internet is not killing community but adding ways to communicate, the talk will be a breadth talk rather than a depth talk. The videocast will be put on ePresence as well as on TVOntario is also recording this as well. The American Sociological Review published an article saying that there is social isolation in America due to the internet. The Globe and Mail and Macleans talked about how the internet sucks and social isolation. Community has been falling apart because of industrialization, bureaucratization, urbanization, capitalism and technology change.
Before the internet, Toronto communities were sizeable, this is based on his NetLab studies in East York. There has been lots of false attribution in the media due to the internet. Now, Barry is addressing whether online community is dominating "real" community. For example, are 5000 "friendsters" replacing 50 friends? Is it drawing us away from real life? Barry just mentioned that this talk will be podcast, great! Dystopians say that internet will kill community, but utopians say that internet will change societies. For example, Wikipedia is replacing the encyclopedia on the 'net. S.D. Clark has an entry on Wikipedia. What they found it is that the internet is NOT taking over everyday life. Virtual communities are atypical, a low percentage belong to them. There is a lot of hype in the activity numbers on the internet, for example, a lot of MySpace accounts are mythical meaning that a lot of people create accounts but they never go online after.
So, the question is are real relationships withering because of the internet? What is the internet doing to us and what are we doing to the internet? Barry's research group NetLab has done lots of community studies, and he is showing results of some of those studies. Some of the results show that people that e-mail the most, also spend a lot of time in face-to-face interaction. So, it seems to be that heavy users still spend a lot of time using physical real interaction. E-mail links a wide range of diversified ties. Some of the research questions that they have are what do personal networks look like. They're also doing a community study in Chapleau, Northern Ontario. Email is still very high even though when people are close to each other and are local.
On Technorati: social networks, connected lives
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