Technically Together: Reconstructing Community in a Networked World

Why we should not accept "networked individualism" as the inevitable future of community.

If social interaction by social media has become "the modern front porch" (as one sociologist argues), offering richer and more various contexts for community and personal connection, why do we often feel lonelier after checking Facebook? For one thing, as Taylor Dotson writes in Technically Together, "Try getting a Facebook status update to help move a couch or stay for dinner." Dotson argues that the experts who assure us that "networked individualism" will only bring us closer together seem to be urging citizens to adapt their social expectations to the current limits of technology and discouraging them from considering how technologies could be refashioned to enable other ways of relating and belonging.

Dotson characterizes different instantiations of community as "thick" or "thin," depending on the facets and manifestations of togetherness that they encompass. Individuating social networks are a form of community, he explains, but relatively thin in regard to several dimensions of communality.

Dotson points out that current technological practices are not foreordained but supported by policies, economic arrangements, and entrenched patterns of thought. He examines a range of systems, organizations, and infrastructures--from suburban sprawl and smartphones to energy grids and "cry-it-out" sleep training for infants--and considers whether they contribute to the atomization of social life or to togetherness and community vibrancy. Dotson argues that technology could support multifaceted communities if citizens stopped accepting the technological status quo and instead demanded more from their ever-present devices.

為什麼我們不應該將「網絡個體主義」視為社群的不可避免未來？

如果社交媒體成為「現代的門廊」（正如一位社會學家所說），為社群和個人連結提供更豐富和多樣的背景，為什麼我們在查看Facebook後常常感到更孤單？首先，正如泰勒·多特森在《技術上在一起》中所寫的那樣，「試著讓Facebook的狀態更新幫助你搬動沙發或留下來吃晚餐。」多特森認為，那些向我們保證「網絡個體主義」只會讓我們更加團結的專家似乎在敦促公民將他們的社交期望適應當前技術的限制，並阻止他們考慮如何重新塑造技術以實現其他形式的關聯和歸屬感。

多特森將不同的社群實例描述為「厚」或「薄」，取決於它們所包含的共同性的方面和表現形式。他解釋說，個體化的社交網絡是一種社群，但在幾個共同性的維度上相對薄弱。

多特森指出，當前的技術實踐並非命中注定，而是由政策、經濟安排和根深蒂固的思維模式支持。他研究了一系列系統、組織和基礎設施，從郊區擴張和智能手機到能源網絡和對嬰兒的「哭出來」睡眠訓練，並考慮它們是否有助於社會生活的原子化還是團結和社群的活力。多特森認為，如果公民停止接受技術現狀，並從他們隨時隨地的設備中要求更多，技術可以支持多面向的社群。

Taylor Dotson is Associate Professor of Social Science at New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology and the author of Technically Together: Reconstructing Community in a Networked World (MIT Press).

Taylor Dotson是新墨西哥礦業與技術學院社會科學副教授，也是《Technically Together: Reconstructing Community in a Networked World》（麻省理工學院出版社）的作者。