the Internet as a community-creation engine

From the earliest days of USENET, with its main.subgroup.subsection.subsubsection format, the Internet has enabled people to form communities of interest that are highly specialised.  Like most anything enabled by technology, this has its good and bad aspects.

Yes, jihadists can get together and tell one another what a wonderful thing it is that they are doing,
but so can anti-jihadists.

My favourite example of this narrowcasting, or nanocasting, is Flickr groups.  There are of course huge Flickr groups devoted to topics of typical photographic interest, like Sunrises and Sunsets (12,453 members).  But there is also the "I didn't think anyone else was interested in that" sort of groups.  For example, I like to take photos that are empty of people.  I consider humans to be noise that messes up the framing of my shots.  As luck would have it, I can submit my photos to the Flickr group

The Last Person on Earth (1,036 members)

(or see just my contributions)

This isn't even the only "no people in the photo" group, there's also

No people

Beyond that, in Lonely City, you can't even have animals in the photos.

Another fave of mine, mostly because I always like to see the fallibility of our technology pointed out, is Public Computer Errors.

Anyone else have favourite Flickr groups?

Last Person on Earth found via Darren Barefoot - Photos of an Empty Earth.

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[Bill]

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