The Vanishing Table, or Community in a World that is No World

Abstract

This paper investigates the possibility of community under modern conditions of "worldlessness," displacement, and disburdenment, conditions recently materialized in, and accelerated by, digital information and communication technologies. The paper engineers an encounter between two literatures: the body of philosophical writing that locates the phenomenon of worldlessness in the progress of modern technology generally; and the growing social science literature examining the character and dynamics of digitallymediated community practices and forms. The paper begins with a theoretical exegesis of aspects of the work of three thinkers-Harold Innis, Hannah Arendt, and Albert Borgmann-who have made thoughtful contributions to our understand of the technological phenomenon gathered here as worldlessness. It then proceeds to reflect upon recent empirical accounts of digitally-mediated community, in light of the philosophical questions raised by these thinkers. The paper concludes by arguing that digital technology, as it is elaborated in the context of contemporary liberal capitalism, provides a material setting in which community is likely to thrive only in a particular, truncated form: as an infrastructure of convenience for instrumental communication between networked individuals.

Community and the Internet

“…Barney (2004) argues that "digital technology impoverishes rather than enriches our shared reality . .…”

Internet Galaxy Meets Postnational Constellation: Prospects for Political Solidarity After the Internet

“…The two conditions of this setting are, first, that there be a basis for mutual understanding, since "the sharing of words and deeds" (Arendt, 1958, p. 198) is what gives birth to politics; second, there must be some kind of boundaries or "stabilizing protection" to hold this shared experience together (Arendt, 1958, p. 198). Here again, the Internet does not seem to supply such structure (Barney, 2004).…”

Philosophy of Computing and Information Technology

“…Borgmann makes a distinction between instrumental, commodified and final communities and argues that virtual communities can at best be instrumental or commodified, because they do not contain "the fullness of reality, the bodily presence of persons and the commanding presence of things" found in final communities [Borgmann, 2004, p. 63]. In a similar fashion Barney [2004] sees virtual communities as inferior due to their lack of physical practices, and Dreyfus is critical of what he describes as the nihilist, irresponsible and often uninformed nature of virtual communities [Dreyfus, 2004]. Winner, finally, has criticized the fact that any kind of online network is called a community, since this broad definition ignores the importance of "obligations, responsibilities, constraints, and mounds of sheer work that real communities involve" [Winner, 1997, p. 17].…”