# Reading The Virtual Community. Email for non-alumni.

<strong>Reading The Virtual Community. In order to participate and get access to the social media classroom, please send an email to your contact person and we'll register you. </strong>
<h3>Our objective</h3>
<p>During five weeks, starting the first week of September, we'll read Howard Rheingold's book The Virtual Community. The book is <a href="http://www.rheingold.com/vc/book/">available online</a>.</p>
<p>The book was published in 1993 and made the notion “virtual community” go mainstream. However, reading the book in this day and age will open our eyes for what we risk losing and what we never fully realized in the online world. We’ll be able to ask the author himself about the evolution of virtual communities.</p>
<p>The main venue will be the Social Media Classroom (SMC) most of us used during Howard’s courses. We created the thread <a href="https://smcforum.holocene.cc/t/where-we-read-the-virtual-community/107">Where we read The Virtual Community</a>. We encourage the use of other platforms or personal blogs to reflect on the discussions - we like decentralized events! Please add <strong>the hashtag #readingtvc</strong>.</p>
<p>While reading the book, we’ll use a number of tools which are familiar to many of us: wikis, forums, mindmaps, video-conferencing, blogs. Please <a href="https://smcforum.holocene.cc/t/introduce-yourself/15/87">introduce yourself</a> here at the <strong>social media classroom</strong>. We have a space here for your <a href="http://augment1.holocene.cc/blog-posts">blog posts</a>, <a href="http://augment1.holocene.cc/mind-maps">mind maps</a>, <a href="http://augment1.holocene.cc/lexicon-readers-virtual-community">lexicon-entries</a> and last but not least <a href="https://smcforum.holocene.cc/t/where-we-read-the-virtual-community/107">a forum</a> where we can discuss on a daily basis. </p>
<p>Zoom will be used for <strong>weekly video conferences</strong>, which will be recorded.</p>
<p>We’ll augment these tools even further using social annotation (hypothes.is), work planning platforms (Trello), collaborative calendars and other tools. Participants are free to use these tools or not, we’ll provide tutorials for unfamiliar tools. </p>
<p>We hope that at the end of the five weeks, we'll have an interesting series of posts, texts and videos which would be accessible to all.</p>

<h3>This is the outline of the reading:</h3>
<p>The weekly video conferences take place <strong>each Thursday at 11 am Pacific</strong>. These discussions will be recorded, summaries will be made and probably also mind maps, lexicon entries and blog posts. Participants are encouraged to refer to other texts and projects while reading the book. Break-out groups can explore new stuff.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Week one (first week of September)</strong>
Introduction
Chapter One: The Heart of the WELL
Chapter Two: Daily Life in Cyberspace: How the Computerized Counterculture Built a New Kind of Place
</li>
<li>
<strong>Week two</strong>
Chapter Three: Visionaries and Convergences: The Accidental History of the Net
Chapter Four: Grassroots Groupminds
</li>
<li><strong>Week three</strong>
Chapter Five: Multi-user Dungeons and Alternate Identities
Chapter Six: Real-time Tribes
</li>
<li>
<strong>Week four</strong>
Chapter Seven: Japan and the Net
Chapter Eight: Telematique and Messageries Rose: A Tale of Two Virtual Communities
</li>
<li><strong>Week five</strong>
Chapter Nine: Electronic Frontiers and Online Activists
Chapter Ten: Disinformocracy
</li>
</ul>