The Internet and its sub-media
However, whilst ‘cyberspace’ brings about new possibilities of association,
the form they take is conditioned by the various sub-media that are available
by way of the Internet.
Too often, ‘virtual communities’ are simply tied to some generic
power attributed to ‘the Internet’. It is important to specify the various
sub-media of the Internet and their implications. As is pointed out by a
number of analysts, early fascination with MUDs and MOOs has
declined substantially in proportion to the dominant uses of the Net.
‘While chat rooms, news groups, and multi-purpose Internet conferences
were meaningful for early Internet users, their quantitative and qualita-
tive importance has dwindled with the spread of the Internet’ (Castells,
2001: 118).
For Castells, the Internet is not an amorphous ocean that individuals
dive into, but a galaxy of regulated sub-media: ‘The Internet has been
appropriated by social practice, in all its diversity, although this appro-
priation does have specific effects on social practice itself’ (118). Drawing
on empirical research, Castells concludes that the on-line identity-building
forums available on the Internet are mostly concentrated among teenagers:
‘It is teenagers who are in the process of discovering their identity, of
experimenting with it, of finding out who they really are or would like
to be.. .’ (118).
Castells’ observation that virtual communities have an adolescent
bell curve contradicts the speculative forecasts of the early 1990s that
the Internet can facilitate the formation of very large-scale, so-called ‘virtual
communities’. These assume the form of voluntary spontaneity without
control by a state apparatus as a result of the Internet’s web-like structure,
a structure which is the legacy of a decentred system of sending informa-
tion.^6 The mere fact that it is decentred was argued to be the basis for the
Internet’s alluring emancipation.The attractions of Internet communication
Of course, the ideological claim that the Internet sets information and its
users ‘free’ was a powerful one in the early years, and was seen by many
writers to be the foundation of a new frontier. The frontier image became
the reigning metaphor of what David Silver has called ‘popular cybercul-
ture’, which refers to that period of civic education of populations into the
attractions of the Internet (see Silver, 2000: 20–1).
But the horizontal/acentric shape of Internet communication offers
attractions that exceed other network architectures (namely, the tele-
phone) – such as bandwidth, the capacity to convey complexity.48 COMMUNICATION THEORYHolmes-03.qxd 2/15/2005 10:31 AM Page 48