FOGcon!

[starlady]

So I am moderating a panel on Saturday March 12 from 13:30 - 14:45 at FOGcon, My City Goes to 1011:

Can an online community be considered a city? Why or why not? If so, how
does one define the community boundaries? If not, what are the
differences?

Who else is going to FOGcon? Also, oyceter is organizing a POC meetup at the con.

See you at the con, I hope!

I need a San Francisco icon, methinks.

Comments

[corneredangel.livejournal.com]

I'm sure you've thought of this already, but in my mind, a city/polis/whatever is defined not by its residents, but by its power structure. If the online community has a defined ruling mechanism, a defined enforcing mechanism, and a defined set of rules, then it may be viewed as an equivalent to a physical city.

[...the other question, of course, is that with some obvious exceptions, a city is a subdivision of a country. So, an online community 'city' can only be valid if it is in fact one of a group of similar entities that are united by a common hierarchy. Just to throw out a hypothetical - would you have considered AOL chatrooms 'cities']

[starlady38.livejournal.com]

AOL chatrooms! Natsukashii!

A city is a sub-unit in many cases, of course, but the thing about the online communities a lot of people are familiar with is that they transcend national boundaries. Obviously there is a hierarchy as well as commonalities of culture that unite us, but they're not necessarily nationally bounded or determined--so the question becomes, what is the determinant?