Running with your interpretation, this is an important caution. To heed this warning, I would say we need to think of community as (among other things) a vehicle through which we accomplish our civic engagement, rather than a shelter in which to isolate ourselves.
After our conversation I watched Join or Die, a Netflix retelling of Bowling Alone which also mentioned Robert D. Putnam's new book, The Upswing, which was published in 2020. Where Bowling Alone starts with an America with great civic and social engagement and charts its decline, The Upswing looks at how America got to that golden era in the first place. He argues that it was due to the early 20th century rise of community groups as America corrected for the excesses of the Gilded Age. I haven't read the book yet myself (it is yet another book on the To-Read list), but that idea is what I believe we need today. If we previously created a functional, engaged, democratic culture through community before, I think we can do it again.
I think we can also. And we need to consider the obstructions of social technologies for the way they eliminate most sensual connective experience. Can genuine community develop fully online.
"Online communities" are communities the same way donuts are food. They may satiate a craving, but there is little nourishment and many undesirable side effects.
Running with your interpretation, this is an important caution. To heed this warning, I would say we need to think of community as (among other things) a vehicle through which we accomplish our civic engagement, rather than a shelter in which to isolate ourselves.
After our conversation I watched Join or Die, a Netflix retelling of Bowling Alone which also mentioned Robert D. Putnam's new book, The Upswing, which was published in 2020. Where Bowling Alone starts with an America with great civic and social engagement and charts its decline, The Upswing looks at how America got to that golden era in the first place. He argues that it was due to the early 20th century rise of community groups as America corrected for the excesses of the Gilded Age. I haven't read the book yet myself (it is yet another book on the To-Read list), but that idea is what I believe we need today. If we previously created a functional, engaged, democratic culture through community before, I think we can do it again.
I think we can also. And we need to consider the obstructions of social technologies for the way they eliminate most sensual connective experience. Can genuine community develop fully online.
Is "online community" an oxymoron?
"Online communities" are communities the same way donuts are food. They may satiate a craving, but there is little nourishment and many undesirable side effects.