Every day, more than 1,000,000 individuals drop into this online universe via the ActiveWorlds Gate (Figure 7). The same could be said for a place called "The Hole" (Figure 6), a dystopian mirror world that can be found in AlphaWorld, the oldest and most popular of more than 1,000 themed environments that make up ActiveWorlds. Waiting for a bus can be a lonely experience in car-obsessed Irvine, where few people can be seen walking the streets (Figure 5). Between the home and the workplace, this is where most face to face conversations takes place. Most prefer to enjoy their coffee safe from strangers in the protection of their home-away-from-home - the climate controlled automobile (Figure 4). A small cluster of tables outside the ubiquitous Starbucks Coffee shop caters to just a handful of people (Figure 3). Signs at the entrance to the parking lot announce that this is private property and that anyone caught loitering, soliciting or trespassing will be prosecuted. Opportunities to meet other residents here are very limited. At significant intersections, where public squares or open markets might be found in a traditional town, Irvine commuters stop to full up on gas or shop at The Crossroads Mall (Figure 2). The result is a reduction in communication between the residents and a weaker community. In this way, physical environments and their online equivalent appear to mirror one another.Ī typical block plan in Irvine California illustrates how planning decisions can ensure that addresses that are in close physical proximity can be effectively separated, ensuring that people from different neighbourhoods are kept apart (Figure 1). Yet the plan of many suburban areas reveals a perverse strategy as diversions, loops and cul-de-sacs increase distance, reduce proximity, and inhibit communication between people at different locations. "Routing", the process of sending a message across a network using the most appropriate path, has its equivalent in the most efficient route that a car might take as it travels through the urban and suburban network of motorways, feeder roads and neighbourhood streets from one address to another. A decision that seems perverse to those engaged in computer mediated conversation makes perfectly good business sense to those who profit from the redirection of social discourse. Clearly, as a private service provider, Telecom is more interested the income that this indirect path generates than it is in the speed and quality of the communication. In networking terms, this is a "perverse routing decision" because it inhibits fast and cost effective communication between individuals online. Rather than making arrangements with other Internet Service Providers so that each can use the other's exchange to ensure that data travels to the destination in the most direct route possible, a process known as "peering", Russell Brown explained how Telecom diverts local Internet traffic to a distant exchange (say, in California) and back again. The process by which this happens is summed up by a phrase that a media commentator recently used to describe how Telecom New Zealand handles network traffic in that country: "Perverse Routing Decisions" ( Brown, 2005). In this paper, I argue that increasing privatization, specialization, and individualism place severe limitations on the shared spaces where these conversations can take place. Other presentations at this conference have highlighted the importance of open conversation with others and the transformations that these conversations make possible. Both the built environment and screen-based experiences shape our sense of community, and the concept of community is central to ideas about civic space and public life. This paper touches on the three related concepts: public space, public discourse, and civil society.
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