anchored in communicative interaction, but which alsodo not involve
technological mediation – a fact which problematizes too simple a real-
life/virtual community distinction.^24 The merit of the flânerieperspective,
for example, is that it points to long-held practices of association which
have very different bases than that of functional connections between
rational, autonomous subjects. It allows that the visual, aesthetic and
mutual sensoria of public life are also strong sources of community feel-
ing. By contrast, the widely heralded instrumental functions of cyber-
space are only a part of the spectrum of human interaction. Moreover, the
hailing of the Internet as a redemption of interactivity accentuates the
way CMC dramatically extends dialogic communication as an instru-
mental aspect of face-to-face communication, but at the expense of other
qualities of mutual presence.
The more reliant individuals are on CMC to meet communication
needs, the less they engage with embodied interaction. No empirical studies
are necessary to demonstrate this relationship.^25 This, in itself, is not a
dystopian situation; it is just that it precludes the possibility of more
rounded (multi-levelled) expressions of everyday life. This is usually
expressed by critics of on-line communication via a broader critique of com-
puterization cast within a humanist narrative. George Lakoff (1995) laments:One of the sad things is that the increase in computer technology does not get
you out into the world more, into nature, into the community, dancing, singing,
and so on. In fact, as the technology expands, there is more expectation that
you will spend more of your life on a screen. That is not, for my money, the way
one should live one’s life. The more that the use of computers is demanded
of us, the more we shall be taken away from truly deep human experiences.
That does not mean you spend time at a computer, you will never have any
deep human experiences. It just means that current developments tend to put
pressure on people to live less humane lives. (124)Once again, the entrenched dichotomy which opposes a ‘deep’
human essence to technology appears here. Rather than on-line interac-
tion being merely a new kind of human experience which may or may not
result in a loss of other levels of human experience, it is seen to result in a
decline in ‘human experience’ in general.
Lakoff’s othering of technology is also evident in his claim that
experience on-line is fictive:Online ‘interactivity’ is an illusion. What passes as interactive is pretty unin-
teractive! It has to do with some fixed menu, not with being able to probe
as you would a person or to judge or be moved as you would in a live inter-
action. There have to be canned answers and canned possibilities. (Lakoff,
1995: 24)We have also seen that community has many possible sources, and
that cosmopolitan settings also make a form of community possible viaTelecommunity 203Holmes-06.qxd 2/15/2005 1:03 PM Page 203