Internet and Usenet: The Emergence of a Global Public Commons By Michael Hauben I. Isolation of the Individual in today's society As the new electronic media develops, new forms of communication are developing which are fundamentally altering and adding to the possible channels of human social interaction. Public social interaction in particular is further developing. The need for such social development started when cities first formed and new city-dwellers grew accustomed to living in a city of strangers. Ray Oldenberg defines the birth of a new kind of human being, the cosmopolitan, "who was able, as his tribal ancestors were not, to relate to others in the new ways that city living made not only possible but necessary. The cosmopolitan did not lose the capacity for knowing others personally. But he gained the capacity for knowing others only categorically. The cosmopolitan did not lose the capacity for the deep, long-lasting, multifaceted relationship. But he gained the capacity for the surface, fleeting, restricted relationship." (Oldenberg, pp.177-178) Along with the growth of cities came the ever increasing separation and isolation of people. People often normally do not have conversations with others they are unfamiliar with or even familiar with every time they leave their living quarters and journey out into the city. Previously in small towns, and even before in tribes (and clans) an individual was likely to know those he or she saw in daily life. (Lofland) The mass accumulation of people into cities made it impossible (both bio-physically and timewise) for an individual to personally know everyone on the streets. (Lofland, p.10) This fact bundled with our hesitation to just talk to any new person makes for a less social experience on daily chores and travels in between familiar locations like the workplace or home. However, as people are social animals and need to communicate this causes social anxiety. There has become a need for new forms of social discourse as people have drifted apart. The problem of modern isolation as described in Oldenberg and others has to be solved socially. If it was left to the individual to break out of his or her isolation, there would be no solution as part of the problem of isolation is that it does not present possible solutions. Social provisions provide a way collectively to examine and work on solutions that would be available to all. The solution can only be developed outside the isolated individual. II. Public Space and Ray Oldenberg's "The Third Place" Public space has traditionally been a shared space that theoretically belongs to everyone, and serves as a place to gather and to meet, both friends and strangers. Lyn Lofland defines public space as, "...those areas of a city to which, in the main, all persons have legal access. I refer to the city's street, its parks, its places of public accommodation. I refer to its public buildings or to the "public sectors" of its private buildings. Public space may be distinguished from private space in that access to the latter may be legally restricted. A private club may deny access to all but its members and invited guests. A home owner or tenant may legally lock his door to the unwanted visitor. But a city may not restrict entrance to a public street." (Lofland, p.19) Public space, such as public parks and libraries, gives people a place to gather and live their lives. A space uninfluenced and unadorned by commercial advertisements so that people define for themselves what they do within that space. This type of choice gives people power over their lives that is often overshadowed by commercial "advice" and entertainment in other spaces. The paucity of such spaces means that those which exist play an important role. Important examples include Central Park in New York City, which serves as an important refuge for city-dwellers during the warmer months, the Alte Kirche in Amsterdam which serves as a public arts center and meeting place, Hyde Park in London which has traditionally has been a place for the expression of a wide range of views by soap box orators and so on. Non-commercial spaces allow people the ability to create and define their lives, rather than paying someone to fill in those areas. These areas are also important in that they have played and continue to play the role of providing people places to practice their right to free discussion and debate. Public space serves many larger social roles. It is in public space where common concerns can be aired, where everyone is equal and has no hierarchical superiority - as such the ideas stand on their merit and can be considered and debated. Public space is democratic since it is open and people can not be legally denied access. At the same time, civic public space has rules enforced by public officials to serve public purpose. These rules are made and kept by civic employees to keep the use of public spaces available so it can be useful by all collectively and not abused by individuals for purely individual gain. Public spaces help by providing a place where the number of possible people to interact with grows, whereas the job, home and other formal spaces usually work to limit the numbers of people one interacts with. (Oldenberg, p.23) Public space is important in that it helps modern cities to live up to their potential as concentrations of many people of different backgrounds and interests. It is in public spaces, that these citizens can meet and interact with others. It is important that such places be open so people can chose to be social according to their schedules and where no one has to be appointed host with subsequent responsibilities. (Oldenberg, p.22) One can express him or herself fully in a public space whereas the social roles and hierarchies imposed by the home or work can tend to be restrictive. It is important for people to have the ability to live as an individual whose full potential is not always limited by rules defined without that individual's full personality in mind. Public space has been disappearing from the U.S. culture over the years as entertainment, relaxation, companionship, news-gathering, and other free-time activities have been commercialized and commodified -- along with the growing use of television, radio, audio-cassettes, and CD players in home use. (Oldenberg, p.xvi) As people have burrowed further and further into their homes they are further isolated from each other beyond the segregation of people into particular jobs. This is unnatural and removes people from contact with others during their free-time. The state of society and advertising only encourages the populace to live in a buying consumer mode rather than in an active citizen mode. Oldenberg describes how the status quo encourages isolation: "The best counter to the harmful and alien influence that the media too often represents are face-to-face groups in which people participate in discussions of what is important to them and how to preserve it. And here, perhaps, is where the media does its greatest damage. The delivered newspaper and the piped-in voices of radio and television encourage people to stay in their homes. Time spent in isolation is time lost to affiliation. The media is geared to isolated consumers while isolating them all the more." (Oldenberg, p.77) Ray Oldenberg defines the third space in his book _The Great Good Place_ as the place separate from the home or work where people gather in either civic places or businesses open to the public, such as cafes, bars, and clubs. These spaces were once more numerous and regular spots for individuals, but are less so today. They are also less common in the USA than in other countries and cultures, where the French cafe, British pub or churches around the world play important roles in citizens lives. Informal public life moves forward and develops in those places. In France, one advantage of the many sidewalk cafes which dot the French cities is that they provide a means of public surveillance of the streets. Parisians unconsciously keep vigil while sipping their cafe au lait's or chatting. The streets are safer with lots of people out on them and this helps keep the space available for the many rather than a select few who might intimidate others. (Oldenberg, p.83) Oldenberg describes the value and excitement which third places help unleash, "Amateurism is encouraged in third places and this, also, lends to the joys of association there. Life on the outside, the whole set of social roles the average individual plays, is inadequate to the expressive needs of a vital human being. The mundane world subdues us, especially the modern urban one, which dislikes "idiosyncrasies" and will not tolerate "characters." ... Where, then, does one do such things?" (p.58) He continues by suggesting that spirited expression is discouraged in today's society. He sees the need for more public places where this kind of upbeat support and encouragement of the individual is required. It is in the third place that Oldenberg explains "one may bellow like a street preacher or wail like a new widow, boast with gusto or assume the authoritarian pomp of a high count judge." (Oldenberg, p.58) Oldenberg describes his understanding of what happens when his third place, what he otherwise calls "The Great Good Place" is missing from people's daily lives, "In cities blessed with their own characteristic form of these Great Good Places, the stranger feels at home -- nay, is at home -- whereas in cities without them, even the native does not feel at home...Without such places, the urban areas fail to nourish the kinds of relationships and the diversity of human contact that are the essence of the city. Deprived of these settings, people remain lonely within their crowds. The only predictable social consequence of technological advancement is that they will grow ever more apart from one another." (p. xv) Public space serves many larger social roles. It is in public space where common concerns can be aired where everyone is equal and has no hierarchical superiority - as such the ideas stand on their merit and can be considered and debated. Public space is democratic since it is open and people can not be legally denied access. At the same time, civic public space has rules enforced by public officials to serve public purpose. These rules are made and kept by civic employees to keep the use of public spaces available so it can be useful by all collectively and not abused by individuals for purely individual gain. Public spaces help by providing a place where the number of possible people to interact with grows, whereas the job, home and other formal spaces usually work to limit the numbers of people one interacts with. (Oldenberg, p.23) III. Public Space, public sphere and the commons Along with the focus on public space and Oldenberg's notion of a "Third place", two other helpful definitions are those of the public sphere and the commons. Public space and commons are fairly defined locations, visible to the eye in the center of town or wherever you see people gathering. Public sphere is more of an abstract concept defining where the common good is defined, discussed and debated. The ideological concept of public sphere is fairly recent, developed by Jurgen Habermas in the 1960s. The "Commons" has a long tradition from the countryside. However, as the group the Ecologist documents, the notion of shared public space has been a community concern for quite some time: "This order [of public space] does not emerge from nowhere. It recreates in broken form a long tradition visible more clearly in the countryside: a tradition of the commons. There, until recently, the category of "the public" barely existed. In day-to-day practice, it was above all the community which exercised dominion over time, space, agriculture and language. Woods and streams feeding local irrigation systems remained intact because anyone degrading them had to brave the wrath of neighbors deprived of their livelihood, and no one was powerful enough to do so. Everybody was subject to everybody else's person, scrutiny and sanctions." (Ecologist, p.5) The public sphere exists in various mass media like newspapers and zines, as the concept of democratic governing, and hopefully in citizens' conversations. As such, the public sphere can encompasses public spaces, but goes beyond physical localities, and is more of a philosophical space. The process of defining public good in public sphere is encouraged as more public spaces become available or expand. IV. The emergence of a new public space and sphere on the Net? While the expansion of physical public space might be restricted by current social and philosophical constraints (for example when business development is encouraged, but not the creation of new public spaces), the development of a virtual public space has begun to occur. In the same time-space of the degradation of American cities, there has been the birth and growth of the computer communication networks, usually called the Internet or the Net, sprouting from America and spreading around the world. (e.g., see Jacobs; Hauben & Hauben) It is important to examine this new communications and information infrastructure to see how it fits in with the uses and growing need for public space and sphere. It would be valuable to see if the Net does in fact combine the characteristics attributed to public spaces and the activities in a public sphere. Those who use the Net to communicate with others have access to many modes of computer mediated communication (CMC). Real time communication is available in multi-user chat areas (such as IRC, vrave, www-chat, chat-tower, spacebar and so on), in multi-user environments (text virtual reality) such as mudd games, moo environments and in much restricted numbers using two-person talk, multi-person ytalk, and the recent development of webphone. Non-real time communication similar to magazines or newspapers but of more of a grassroots nature occurs in Usenet in newsgroups, on mailing lists and web conferencing and communities like freenets, local conferencing and the like. E-mail from an individual to another, or to multiple individuals is the asynchronous analogue to the talk command. Both real-time and non real-time discussions are divided up into millions of topic areas. These areas contain a widely diverse coverage of intellectual, recreational, and everyday topics. It is possible for individuals to develop both synchronous and asynchronous groups instantaneously if they so desire and know of others to communicate with about a particular topic. Social conventions have been formed on the Net similar to the tending of the commons. The use of the commons was closely regulated through communal rule. In both situations, it has been required by social convention to observe certain rules of conduct because these rules serve to enforce the will and protection of the greater common good over the good of the individual. As the space is shared and was originally made available through public funding and in a desire to unite people and because it is to the benefit of the whole, it is important to prevent against abuse. Appropriate use policies (AUPs) and the forming of Netiquette were instrumental in forming the social rules of conduct online. (Hauben & Hauben) In cities, people tend to identify and code others and to create their own identity through several factors. The less prominent is that of dress. People can tell who civil servants and other service workers are in a location by their uniform. However, uniforms and dress have become less of a valuable clue to help identify and judge others on as tastes and variety mesh and interact and as fashion comes to combine many styles. An individual's behavior is another way to judge their identity. Lofland argues that location has evolved to be the primary source of assigning identity to the strangers who surround us in cities. (p.161) In a sense, location can determine interest, and sometimes social class. Of course, people in transit using the subway or bus systems are on their way to a location, and so you really can not identify others in public transport. However, people choose to be in particular areas based on what exists in that neighborhood. Online, the newsgroups and mailing lists and other public public social areas that people chose to frequent are even more interest-specific, whether that means only reading or reading and contributing to them by adding thoughts and messages. However location can be limited in physical space by social class. This is harder to define online. There still are major differences involved in judging people online and in person. Judgment online tends to be based on how someone represents their thoughts in writing, and as such includes evaluating others maturity, intelligence, thoughtfulness and possibly social concern. Whereas judgment of others in-person is very often biased by a different set of characteristics which are less based on intelligence. These include physical attraction,social aptitude and sometimes status. The social mores of the in-person world are different from the young online world, and the different context in which people interact in both helps establish the difference. Interaction among strangers in person is discouraged except in particular situations such as parades, resort areas, emergencies and so on. (Lofland, p.170) Online however, much of the communication in newsgroups, mailing lists, chat channels and mudds is between people unfamiliar with each other and this is expected and encouraged. However, people will only be strangers in these contexts while they are new. After becoming more of a regular, friendships are formed and people build ties, however weak, which link them together. (Wellman) But the point in joining a newsgroup, reading the conversation and at some point adding your own contribution is to communicate and discuss topics. This type of interaction requires two or more people to be successful, and in the public worldwide online discussion areas, membership is not selective and is open to all. Those online are there to interact and meet new people, whether for a long or short term experience. Cameron Laird wrote "it's bumping into unexpected crystals of insight or reporting from times and places I'd otherwise not intersect," as one of his primary reasons for being online. Why is it that in person people are suspicious or scared of those they do not know, and online there is much less hesitation to make contact? True there is more distance online as you only see as much of the other person as he or she wishes to be seen, as where one lives, name, gender, sexual orientation and the rest can be hidden if desired. This is a question that needs more study. Another question for further research is to understand how the new social norms online are affecting people in their interactions with others in face to face encounters. The third place allows individuals the ability to exercise a measure of control in community life. It is here where in the conversation with others, commonality can be formed regarding living conditions and the influence from organizations and businesses from outside the community. (Oldenberg, p.78) The Net provides similar spaces to discuss community affairs. While the majority of gatherings happen around topics of interest, some interests are local newsgroups and chat areas focused around specific geographies. For example, there are newsgroup hierarchies for New York City (nyc.general, nyc.annouce, nyc.politics, and so on), New York State (ny.general), San Francisco (bay.general, etc), states in the North East (ne.general, etc), Michigan (mi.misc) and so on. Action in these groups tend to be from two areas, those living there, and those who intend to visit or perhaps move to that area. This assists in local activism since the majority of users come from that area who read and post to that group. Lofland sees the downfall of cities in the establishment of enforced spatial order which encouraged the original development. This enforced division of people is what she sees as a source of today's urban crises derived from the social segregation of people and activities (p.177). The Net helps by unifying people based on interest rather than dividing them upon financial or race lines, as city planning seems to have done. Garth Graham comments on the value of the Net to unite humans, rather than separating as many critics believe, "The direct socio-economic impact of a Community Network is that it makes human institutions human again. We begin to see organizations as relationship networks and not, as we have for the last 150 years, as machines. A Net makes us human again because, on the Net, YOU are the boss. On the Net, nobody needs or dares to represent anyone else. The most significant behavior that the Net rewards is maturity." Although third places are democratic and welcoming of new comers, there are well-respected regulars. About these people, Oldenberg writes, "Through the regular company of the third place is composed of peers, it is there, as elsewhere, some are more equal than others. Those to whom an extra bit of deference is extended embody the same characteristics. They are not the glad-handers or the joke-tellers, or the most dutiful in attendance. They are the honest, tactful, and considerate. They can be trusted. In their presence, others know where they stand. They are worth knowing and others are comfortable with them. In my considerate experience with a progression of third places encompassing all age groups, I have found this facet to be inevitable, the cream rises." (p.78) The same can be said about newsgroups - as people stay on and become regular contributors, those who honestly contribute to the whole generally gain the respect of others. The Net obviously does not provide everything interaction in a physical public space does - such as all of the values attributed to face to face communication. Using the net means you are among the ideas and feelings of other people though, however, you are not actually in their presence, so all feelings of good will or friendship are not necessarily fully present. While the net does not necessarily replace the existence of physical public spaces, it does provide much of the value found to exist in public spaces and spheres. Many people have reported on how the Net has made a positive impact on their lives (see Hauben & Hauben, especially chapters 1, 11, 13, 14 and 15). A major improvement made by the online public space is the enlargement of previously geographically-limited public spaces and spheres to reach across the globe. People who are online can act in a public sphere as they acted in local physical areas despite the fact they are separated geographicly by many miles. Therefor the Net has made it possible to to expand the public space available to people, and as a new means of social interaction and human-to-human communication. If new institutions and social forms develop to improve life in the future, the emergence of a global public commons made possible by the Internet and Usenet will need to be supported and better understood.