Networked Neighbourhoods – The Connected Community in Context

Citation

Button, D.M. (2008), "Networked Neighbourhoods – The Connected Community in Context", Kybernetes, Vol. 37 No. 2, pp. 370-371. https://doi.org/10.1108/03684920810851249

As this review is written the technology for linking people and their communities is changing so that producing an up‐to‐date text on networking presents great difficulty. The author does, however, spend much time considering the people themselves and their reactions to being linked so closely in their own neighbourhoods.

This book will interest our readers who are working in the fields of sociocybernetics as well as those with a bias towards online interactions.

To tackle this subject Patrick Purcell, the editor of the book, has collected a set of papers written mainly by academics. All the contributions deal with the effect of linking people using the technology available at the time of writing. The new technology and for example, the developing ways in which the internet facility is used have changed some of the presented conclusions in some quite fascinating ways. The author develops his themes by dividing the book into four sections:

1. 1.

   Summary and discussion of the papers to be presented.

2. 2.

   The nature of communities and how they have changed in recent times.

3. 3.

   Research projects that examine both the sociological and technological aspects of the community are presented.

4. 4.

   The concluding section looks at mediated communications with some reference to the use the elderly make of the new technology.

The book is firstly concerned about the way in which new online technology has affected the way people interact in their communities. It is not solely about the effect the internet has on its users.The editor has selected his contributions to try to reflect on such interesting situations where people are connected by modern technological equipment but do not meet “face‐to‐face”. Internet friendship sites, facebook and myspace, etc. provide the means of building up a circle of “friends” and this book considers the resulting influence which the new technologies has on the way in which communities configure and how individuals participate in them.

In many ways this text has opened up new ground and is the fore‐runner of many more that will consider the issues of people and.their connection to new technology. In consequence it provides an instructive read with the relevant collected, articles well matched and presented by the editor.