If you do here are the entire proceedings of a very interesting conference put together by the Club of Rome (a global think tank and centre of innovation and initiative) on Living in Cyberspace: The Construction of Social Capital in Virtual Worlds. link
If not you can always use BabelFish to get the gist of it.
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This question of building social capital is of great interest to me. As we've discussed previously, many fear the issues mentioned on the blog just today regarding theft, bullying, stalking, children being exposed to pornography, and other woes. In Robert Putnam's "Bowling Alone," Putnam concludes that while there are many issues that are leading to the decline of social capital, he points to television and technology as the greatest of the problems as people are isolating themselves and spending more time with a box than with their friends, neighbors and families, much less in nature and participating in their civic society. Another study just published from the Annenburg School at UC found that more people now find greater connection from their online communities, than from their physical communities. Is this a good thing, or a bad thing?
Interesting, too that your post is in German. I spent a good bit of time getting "tours" of many new places in SL from a very kind German this weekend. By the end of a couple of hours of flying through many different islands, we had discussed our views on American and European politics and I appreciated his candor. He also explained that although he used a translator, he hardly had to any more, because he had been speaking to so many English speakers in SL that he had become nearly fluent. I can't help but believe that in SL we can be any color, gender, size, race, (species for that matter) and blur the lines of our differences with much more open and honest debate. Perhaps that's being naiive and hopeful, but I have found it fascinating and refreshing. Reminds me of the story during WWII where people on an island who had been friends and neighbors had peacefully coexisted until they recieved news that their countries were at war. The news told them they had become enemies... and so they became enemies...
If new technologies give broader access for individuals to share their voices, can't we harness that energy to make positive change, rather than allow the negatives to take over?
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