Guide Questions for Anada Mitra’s Virtual Commonality: Looking for India on the Internet

 

1. What are some of the assumptions that Mitra makes about the possibility of communities in cyberspace?

 

Mitra assumes that communities and nations could be imagined around shared, cultural practices.  He throws out historical and geographic characterization.  Communities share a language and cultural practices.  Mitra goes outside the idea of communities as a group contained within a physical proximity and invites the reader to look beyond geographic locale.  He acknowledges the lack of “human touch” with a cyberspace community, but does not believe that should limit the idea that they do exist. 

 

 

2. The “special scale” of Mitra’s dialog is national.  Do you believe that in a nation of a billion people an Internet community such as soc.culture.indian can have a national presence or impact?  What are the conditions for such an impact to take place?

 

No, I don’t believe that in a nation of a billion people an Internet community cannot have a national presence or impact because of the lack of technology that resides in India.  Also, I think there are a select number of people who would be controlling the cyber-community instead of a wide-range of opinions and interaction. 

I think it is imperative for a nation to have a global impact in which they would be able to have that kind of presence on the Internet.  For, example, America has a wide range of technology and awide range of people have access to the Internet.  This makes the national presence more universal, instead of a select few controlling the role of cyberspace.

 

3. The phrase “imagined community” is often applied to chat groups such as those studied by Mitra.  Is he suggesting an imagined community or a “real” community?

 

A common fascination with a topic is not grounds enough to classify a group as a community.  The connection between members would have to be more than a common interest.  I believe the community he has constructed is imagined.  People talking on the computer can enhance a “real” community, but it in itself cannot be a community.

 

4. David Bell refers to a “digital diaspora”—people physically, spatially separated but who are making connections and finding commonalities across the Internet (and on bulletin boards specifically).  For this digital diaspora, ‘electronic space that they can occupy,’ meaning that it provides an important cultural resource.”  What do you think of this description of the power of the Internet in a developing culture?

 

I think this power that he speaks of is something internal, in that it really is not affecting any global scale of dominance.  In developing cultures, finding commonalities or making connections may strengthen that culture, but is it really having an affect on their global relationship.  The connections and commonalities that these people are finding, are building communities, but I don’t think they are affecting their global position and power.