Communities: Dancing with Fire?

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Communities: Dancing with Fire?
Martin Dugage asks, "Why is it that the strongest advocates of a networked economy fail to see the importance of communities, which they wrongly equate to social networks?" And Nancy White responds, "Perhaps our resistance or worries about community may come from the fact that communities are like dancing with fire." With the right practice, she says, they are great - but otherwise, there is the risk of getting burned. She sketches some of the elements of this practice - but I still think that groups depend on sameness, which means the members must already be relevantly the same. More...