Living on Cybermind : categories, communication, and control
"Cybermind is an Internet mailing list, originally founded in 1994 to discuss the issues and problems of living online. It proved exceptionally fertile and is still going strong thirteen years later." "This book is an ethnographic investigation which follows Cybermind members in their daily lives on the List, and explores the ways they look at the world, argue, relate online life to offline life, use gender, and build community. Perhaps the most comprehensive history of an Internet group ever published, it includes detailed analyses using List members' own words and commentary, and develops a unique theory of the relationship between culture, the problems of communication, and the ongoing processes of categorisation. Living on Cybermind illustrates how behaviour is affected by the organisation of communication, and how people deal with the paradoxes involved in resolving ambiguity and truth in a situation in which presence is always on the verge of slipping away."--Jacket
xii, 355 pages ; 24 cm.
9780820495149, 9780820495132, 082049514X, 0820495131
77767279
Introduction
Towards an analysis of communication
Cybermind : a history
The Internet and the world
Communication as infrastructure
Relations within and between groups
The virtual life, asence, and experience
The reign of authenticity
Bounding the body : moods, intensities, and the haunting
Existence and exchange
Control and crisis
Invasions, fragmentation, and the mobilization of gender and politics
Constructions of online "community"
Intersection of the list with the offlist and the offline
Conclusion