[BBS ANSI Login Screen example - Wikimedia Commons]
An online community is a group of people who interact in a virtual environment. They have a purpose, are supported by technology, and are guided by norms and policies (Preece, 2000).
The Origin Of The Online Community
In a paper published by the University of Maryland, Jenny Preece, Diane Maloney-Krichmar and Chadia Abras factor in different elements that shape the character of online communities. Along with the purpose of the community, they differentiated in use of technology, governance structure, community size and culture and whether or not there was a physical component to the community as well. At that time the World Wide Web had been available to the world for about a decade, but it was already clear that the development of different communities was needed to create inclusive groups to cater different linguistic and cultural needs.
With the invention of the ARPANET, a lot of processes started to get digitalized. Different arguments can be made that this was a good and/or bad development. The positive side of digitalization is the improvement of documentation. It can speed up productivity and allows certain tasks to be done quicker. On the other side, recently many studies has also shown some downside to developments such as the Internet, the mobile phone and Social Media. Aside from being a time sink which can hinder productivity, this of course reminds us of the question the ABC interviewer asks Arthur C. Clarke around the computer driven society. Leaping forward to 2020, while Clarke stated that we as human make are own decision, distinguishing between what is fact and what is not becomes increasingly difficult due to a combination of lack of knowledge and information overload. These worries were considerably less regarding the future of the Internet in the 1970s rightfully so, as at the time, the ARPANET was only accessible for a small group of Universities, Research Centers and the Military, as they saw opportunities to sent messages much faster than ever before.
On of the first features that was established on the ARPANET was Email. While some sort of Email already existed before the initiation of ARPANET, the first networked electronic mail was sent in 1971 by a group of programmers which included Ray Tomlinson, who many credit as the sender of the first email. While a new generation is growing up without knowing the vital role of email for online communication, the role of email should not be understated. In 2011, some Universities stopped distributing email addresses because they felt Generation Y and X viewed email as outdated. Meanwhile, here we are in 2020 and every major Social Media platform still offers the option to use email as part of their login and/or authentication process. While the use of an email address for login could eventually be overtaken by the phone number, email is still here to stay and often still needed to login in and/or be part of an online community.
As the early email systems were point to point, people could only send a note to just one other person, up until 1975, when list servers were invented. Allowing messages to be seen by multiple people let to other developments, including the Bulletin Board System, which was designed based on the metaphor of an actual physical bulletin board. While the original of the Bulletin Board System can be found in the concept of Community Memory, which was initiated in Berkely, California in the early 1970s, the first attempts were not always successful. Most successful use cases can by the end of the 1970s and in the 1980s. Through email and bulletin boards, early online communities began to form focusing on education, becoming the predecessor of network communities and office communities in the early 90s, larger communities towards the end of the 1990s up to the online communicatie that we now know today.
Along with the development of email and bulletin boards, chat systems started to get traction by the end of the 1980s. In 1988 Internet Relay Chat (IRC) was developed by Jarkko Okarinen, which laid the foundation for the instant messaging as we know it today. In the past 30+ years, the development and reinvention of email, bulletin board and chat systems, have been vital to the growth of online communities in every shape or form.
[...to be continued...]
About Social Media in Suriname
This story is part 30 of my #Maynia goal to write a book in the month of May. The topics I'll be writing about from May 1st until May 31st, 2020:
(Want to read them all? The chapters will become clickable as the month progresses. Please note that I'm not always writing in chronological order, so check all 31 to see which are clickable)
The history of the Internet according to the Internet
1 - Predicting the Future
2 - The origin of the online community
3 - The birth of the World Wide Web
The World Wide Web
4 - Endless opportunities
5 - For education and entertainment
6 - Social Media before Social Media
The Rise of Web 2.0
7 - In Search of the first online Empire
8 - User Generated Content
9 - Let’s Get Connected
The Golden Generation
10 - From friends and relatives to personal interest
11 - The birth of the like button
12 - Being number 1
The Battle for the internet
13 - Socialnomics and the fight for online supremacy
14 - The features and takeovers that shaped the landscape
15 - It’s more than just Social
The Mainstream and The Alternatives
16 - The rise of the creator and the influencer
17 - The comeback of traditional media
18 - The age of information overload
The Marketeer and the Community
19 - Can’t we all have a little fun?
20 - Is age really just a number
21 - The Dangers of Dopamine and Instant Gratification
Suriname: From Dail Up to Tik Tok
22 - Getting connected
23 - Before Facebook Conquered the World
24 - The Growth of Social Media minded Suriname
25 - The Rise of Social Media Entertainment
26 - Twisting The Rules
27 - Free Facebook
28 - The diversification of Social Media
29 - From Brand Ambassadors to Social Media Influencers
30 - The Fight against Fake
The Recap
31 - What’s next?
Maynia Log
Learn more about Maynia by reading about it here.
Today's word count: 715
Total word count: 2.541
Daily review:
Like expected, still a little low on the word count, but enjoying the process quite a lot. Do have to start writing earlier in the day, because I feel like there are a lot of typo's in the text.
Daily question:
This month I'll post a daily question on which you can comment. Everyday I will give away a Hive SBI to my favorite. 😉
Today's question:
Have you ever been active on an online bulletin board?
Sources:
Preece, J., Maloney-Krichmar, D. and Abras, C. (2003) History of Online Communities In Karen Christensen & David Levinson (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Community: From Village to Virtual World. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 1023-1027.
Retrieved from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228717063_History_of_emergence_of_online_communities
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulletin_board_system
https://blog.higherlogic.com/lessons-from-the-long-history-of-online-communities
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_email
http://openmap.bbn.com/~tomlinso/ray/firstemailframe.html
