The Anthropology of Online Communities- Samuel M. WIlson & Leighton C. Peterson

This article was hard for me to read because of the print.. I believe that it was scanned for us to view but when I printed it was blurry and hard to read- so I'll do my best from what I can remember and my notes.  Apologies if this is not as informative as the others.

Wilson and Peterson have described in almost like a historical context - the internet.  They kind of trace the internet from the start.  They write that 'Through most of the 1980's and 1990's, the conviction was widespread that the growing and evolving communications medium comprising inter-networked computers would enable the rapid and fundamental transformation of social and political orders' (Wilson & Peterson 2002: 450).  This thought gives us the idea of what it was like then and how true that statement was and is to this day.  

In their section 'The Internet Revolution' they talk about how this concept and this technology allows the citizens to have the power to communicate through these means.  The authors mention the Utopian and Orwellian views in relation to CyberPunks who envisioned these transformations (Wilson & Peterson 2002: 451).

What I found interesting about this article is one small tiny detail that I'd never thought of before or gave much thought of.. was the fact that Wilson and Peterson mention that the majority of users in the 1990's were in the U.S. and how that began to change.  I'd never payed much attention to this concept because I took for granted that everyone in the world (the bigger countries 'industrialized nations' (wilson & Peterson 2002: 452)) had access to the World Wide Web and email.  Not realizing that America was basically where all of this started.

Their article focuses on social practices and not the user technologies.  Focusing on what happens within these spaces and the reasons why things happen within these spaces as opposed to offline social practices. Each individual online is considered apart of other interacting communities, societies, or cultures (Wilson & Peterson 2002: 455).

Another interesting aspect that I found was that Identities online cannot be understood unless they are considered in an offline context.  This was hard for me to understand for awhile because the online identity that you create is created by you .. hence, your real life comes into play and all kinds of factors play a part in your online identity.  Creating a new identity or modifying your own.