Kevin Tharp <k.tharp@cqu.edu.au> writes

> I still
> stand by my conviction that it is not the infrastructure that 
> makes the
> community it is the people.  Without the people, there is no 
> community.Perhaps it would have been better stated,  "the 
> community is then
> supported and shaped by the interaction of the people and the
> infrastructure."

Thanks Kevin. 

It *is* always a complicated matter :)
and one with a lot of type face used on it.  However, 
if i was to propose a methodology, it would be to take both approaches.
Thus in the first scan, perhaps you look at the people,
in the second scan you look at the 'infrastructure'.

If you only do one then it often falls into one side alone.
Ie the people seem self determining, and the infrastucture
seems to have only minor effects.

However, despite ambiguities about what the hell anyone means
by 'infrastructure', it should be remembered that the infrastructure 
is something we, as people, grow into.  It is there before we arrive
and, unless we succeed in killing everyone and obliterating all
archaeology, it will be there, or traces of it will be there, after 
we depart.

If we wanted to sociobiological about it, people and infrastructure of
some type or another seem to exist together - they cannot be separated.  

I'd like to emphasise again that there could be more than one type 
of infrastructure. Thus for the Internet:

a) there is the corporate organisational strucure of the wider society
    and the way that affects what can be legally done online.
b) there is the general physical layout of the Internet wiring.
c) there are the technical programming features of the net
    which give it is possible porperties.
d) there are the ways of, and distributions of access to the net
e) there are the ways communication on the net is structured, email
    ICQ, Mailing List, MOO, chatroom etc....
f) there are the 'microsocieties' which people come from to use
    the net. which give things like time available, provision of 
    contacts, 'unsatisfied needs', work organisation, township 
    organisation, local politics, local disasters  etc, which 
    people use the net as adjunct for.

undoubtedly many more.  People live within these kinds of restrictions
and enablements, and these r&e's at least partially make them what they are.

or so it seems to me :)

But at this point, I'd go back to arguing 'community' is not a thing
in itself, but the term is something we should look at as a rhetorical
deployment.  What is its role in politics, who uses it, what is it used
for etc?

jon



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