Community: Online and IRL

When I first thought of community, I think of the people that I interact with daily in the real world.  But as I looked more in depth at my community, I realized that technology plays a major role in shaping my community.

For me, technology become part of my community but also shapes my community in real life.  Having an easy way to communicate with people I know in real life makes it easy to form connections with them.  Many of these ways of communicating use modern technologies and social media networks.  These devices and networks also are part of my community as they shape my community.  It almost creates a cycle, where the community creates the community, which then that community modifies the community, which then results in the current community.  Some of my closest friends that I have now would be simply just someone’s name I knew if I hadn’t had access to a cell phone in order to contact them to spend time together.  In this case it was the technology that was necessary to start the connection that then would have continued regardless of technology or not.  As these social media networks and technologies become even more widespread than they already are, then the lines between the IRL community and the online community become increasingly blurred.