Big money....

The biggest purchase I think I would ever spend online would not be over 2000 but it would definately have to depend on what it was. I would spend that much on a laptop or something that I was getting from a credible source but I would never ever buy something offline for that much money if I didnt really know where it was coming from. You would also have to be sure there is a return or exchage policy because you could possibly get duped. There is no way to tell once you put your information out there exactly what you are getting yourself into.

Community!

Virtual Communities and Real Communities have alot of the same ideas. Virtual communities need people who have common interests, people share a sense of belonging, sense of place, homesteading, government, loyalty and trust. The only difference is that online it is much harder to trust someone and be loyal to them than it is in a real community. The reason being that in a real community you meet that person face to face and for the most part know who they are as a person. In a virtual community the person could be someone completely different than who they say they are, and then you are giving your trust out to someone who is a fraud. This being the same reason that it is difficult to have loyalty in a virtual community. A virtual community though has that same sense of belonging as a real community does, and is just as fulfilling.

*PrEsEnTaTiOn*

I'm doing this blog entry a little late so my presentation is already finished and we are presenting tomorrow I assume! But the book the I chose to do my project on is The Virtual Community by Howard Rheingold. It was actually a pretty interesting book, because he has explored the internet to an extent that I have never seen before. In some of the chapters though he covers things that we have already talked about in class and have gone over so that makes it alot easier to understand what he is talking about. He talks alot about the positives and negatives of virtual communities and so that will be a big part of my presentation. Rheingold is called the pioneer of the virtual community and it's easy to see why, the man knows his stuff :)