Nurturing Virtue Inwards Community

A summary of:
Schultze, Q. J. (2002). Habits of the High-Tech Heart: Living Virtuously inwards the Information Age. Baker Academic: Grand Rapids, MI, USA.
Chapter vii - Nurturing Virtue inwards Community

This chapter was interesting. It affirms the importance of placeness equally business office of community - "community of virtue is higher upward all a abode place" (166) - inwards that i needs to last a player inwards as well as recipient of the pluses as well as minuses of one's actions inwards club to cultivate virtuous behavior, which requires closed to rootedness to a place. So field what makes cyberspace so unique - as well as Wertheim suggests a position that tin give the sack conform the soul, ironically! - is that it obliterates placeness, or that it stands exterior of infinite as well as time. The flipside of this is that it is "de-localizing" us as well as "unrooting" our lives, as well as "we increasingly alive inwards a 'situation' of instantaneity, immediacy, as well as ubiquity" (168). Timelessness as well as spacelessness leaves us without moral anchors, as well as "Today, manufacturing online communities is similar creating gold-rush towns that come upward as well as run amongst the promises of the day" (169). How tin give the sack nosotros cultivate pity inwards this gold-rush scenario? - "Eugene H. Peterson says that nosotros 'discover the pregnant of the gratis life inwards acts of pity as well as loving service, non inwards running afterwards people who brand big promises to us'" (170). Another helpful analogy is that inwards cyberspace, nosotros are ever tourists - "Cyberculture tends to position us equally tourists roving across geographic infinite rather than equally neighborly inhabitants of a detail place" (171) - which way that nosotros are interested inwards appropriating any it is (commodities, friendships, etc.) as well as so getting out of there, returning to our "real lives" as well as leaving the mess nosotros created inwards our hotel rooms for someone else to gear upward clean up. The starting fourth dimension step, then, is to larn to a greater extent than individually responsible, which volition solely move on when nosotros select to remain to gear upward clean upward the mess; i.e. nosotros select to larn rooted to the space/time. And the 2nd step, a to a greater extent than hard one, would last to larn hosts inwards this space. The antithesis to tourism is hospitality:

Hospitality thereby transforms homelessness into neighborliness. There is no 'virtual' equivalent of hospitality, since it occurs inwards a place. Illich says that hospitality requires a 'threshold' over which i tin give the sack invite another. Communication technologies, he argues, tend to abolish the walls, doors, as well as tables that nosotros postulate to exercise hospitality. He says that nosotros postulate to recover 'a exercise of hospitality... threshold, table, patience, listening.' Such hospitality provides the 'seedbeds for virtue as well as friendship' as well as thence the position for the rebirth of community (172).

Secondly, Schultze argues that spoken communication is fundamentally dissimilar from as well as superior to the kinds of communication that the Internet facilitates, because it is spoken communication that "is crucial for nurturing communities of virtue" (166). Firstly, spoken communication - inwards individual - captures a keen bargain to a greater extent than depth than technologically mediated forms, which increasingly require us to include petty emoticons to ensure nosotros bring our messages to the receiver. Bizarrely, Schultze argues that spoken communication is of import for 2 other reasons: hope as well as memory. I empathize the retention bit. Here's how he describes the hope (I recall it's lovely!):

Technologically mediated expressions of hope are nearly ever abstractly instrumental; they straight our attending away from our ain communities as well as focus it on closed to distant dry soil of affairs. Such instrumental expressions of hope thereby tend toward a sort out of propaganda predicated on using technique to gain audiences' attending as well as to enjoin them to wishing something - such equally becoming to a greater extent than attractive or believing inwards an ideology. Advertising as well as movies are filled amongst such propagandistic expressions of hope - hope for cosmetic beauty, happy endings, as well as cleaner wash. Moral hope, on the other hand, comes non through rhetorical manipulation but through authentic dialogue nurtured inwards communities over time. It flows from the life of the community equally members commune orally. Ong calls this sort of hope 'arrested dialogue,' an facial expression of mutuality as well as shared desire. 'Hope,' writes Ong, 'is the departure betwixt data encoded inwards machines as well as existent cognition inwards the consciousness of man.' Words enable us to part hope, similar an invitation to riposte, to life amongst others (177).... Speech carries a sort of sacramental potential that enables us to re-invoke particular pregnant as well as significance into our understandings of our lives inwards human relationship to others (178).

This chapter has made me wonder if a radical revisioning of the Internet powerfulness last based on an oral conversational / hospitality model: What if nosotros could capture conversation (videos of people talking, removing the anonymity of communication) as well as so invite i closed to other to participate inwards the furthering of that conversation? What if people could search this infinite for conversations that involvement them as well as so innovate themselves to the people having those conversations? People could select private conversations inwards this space, but what if those people could brand these strangers experience welcome as well as inwards appropriate cases invite them to bring together in? And what if these conversations were to a greater extent than rooted inwards fourth dimension (if non space), so that they had an expiration appointment on them as well as inwards club for a conversation to run along - equally inwards the existent populace - at that spot would select to last continued involvement inwards that topic? There would select to last commitment to the preservation of conversations as well as stories, equally at that spot has been inwards oral cutlures of myth as well as religion. (As a side point: I recall nosotros actually postulate to reevaluate whether 'progress' inwards itself is preferable to 'continuity', which is what oral cultures value. Valuing continuity is a measurement toward becoming to a greater extent than responsible the Blue Planet as well as to time to come generations.) And at that spot would select to last an endeavour toward consensus making, toward shared understanding, etc. inwards this vision (in contrast to the ways inwards which cyberspace currently "fails to advance our capacity for dialogue, cooperation, as well as consensus" as well as instead "appeals to the private ego" (183)). The emphasis of such a infinite would last on conversation, whereas straight off "cyberspace ordinarily substitutes consuption for conversation" (183).

Schultze states: "Cyberculture tends to spend upward the possibility of the real thing that it most needs to foster community: an overarching moral vision predicated on personal responsibilities, framed past times shared obligations, as well as forged through civil dialogue" (185). But to a greater extent than of import than communication, Schultze concludes that nosotros postulate communion! This would "include words that tending us tell stories, rear intimacies, as well as gear upward trust" (186). This is nigh actually experiencing other people, non merely abstracted representations of them; as well as empathizing amongst each other, as well as experiencing intimacy inwards the infinite of the Internet. While Schultze says this is the goal, he does non select a solution for fostering communion. Nonetheless, I recall it's worth figuring out how to do so.