Read this while holding in your mind the roles of the villages which are currently appearing on the web:
What happened rather with the rise of cities, was that many functions that had heretofore been scattered and unorganized were brought together within a limited area, and the components of the community were kept in a state of dynamic tension and interaction. In this union, made almost compulsory by the strict enclosure of the city wall, the already well-established parts of the proto-city - shrine, spring, village, market, stronghold - participated in the general enlargement and concentration of numbers, and underwent a structural differentiation that gave them forms recognizable in every subsequent phase of urban culture. The city proved not mere a means of expressing in concrete terms the magnification of sacred and secular power, but in a manner that went far beyond any conscious intention it also enlarges all the dimensions of life. Beginning as a representation of the cosmos, a means of bringing heaven down to earth, the city became a symbol of the possible. Utopia as an integral part of its original constitution, and precisely because it first took form as an ideal projection, it brought into existence realities that might have remained latent for an indefinite time in more soberly governed small communities, pitched to lower expectations and unwilling to make exertions that transcended both their workaday habits and their mundane hopes. - Lewis Mumford, The City in History
It is a mistake to do theoretical work on online social spaces without first reading The City in History.
Went out and bought it on your recommendation. Looking forward to digging in.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/wellohorld/2794534542
Posted by: Jerry Paffendorf | August 24, 2008 at 05:30 PM