Civic society and Social capital

I just finished reading Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam. I highly recommend it for anyone interested in American culture and its social structure, not to mention, its nowabout (although it was written in 2001) and future.

There is a lot of material in the book. In summation, it tells us how America was transformed into a powerful nation by means of grassroot movements, took place somewhere towards the end of 18th century and beginning 19th century. It created powerful associations such as the Red Cross, which recently helped China raising funds for quake victims. Consider others also, such as Scout and Salvation Army.

However, by end of 19th century, the society, swept by gigantic corporations, and other factors such as coming of television, fundamentally changed its members' focus. People are less interested in civic participation. People, especially the elites, travel a lot, breaking up place-based communities. Nonetheless, technology brings opportunity. Information technologies for example, can bring people together again.

In my research, World of Warcraft (WoW) is one technology that breaks the normal way of gaming - which is alone. In WoW, people play together, form teams, and associations in the gaming environment. A lot of players hang out because there are others in the gaming world. These associations create communities, even if they mainly for play.

These gathering of people also enabled the formation of other communities, only indirectly related to play. One is the modding communities. Mods are programs that basically change part of the gaming experience. They modify the user interface or add functionalities. They are approved by the gaming company - Blizzard. Modding communities comprise of generally young programmers, who hang out in chatrooms and also create mods. They exchange experience and educate the new modders.

Blizzard learnt a lot from modders. Modders participate in the forums actively and they are quick to discover bugs in the game. A few employers of Blizzard also participate in these chatrooms. These are great mechanisms for Blizzard to improve on the game consistently.

Reflecting on WoW, the players, the modders, and Blizzard, virtual environment can really enable people to connect and become whole again. By virtual environment, I also mean things such as facebook, which is another place for you to put up what you like others to know about you. They are fundamentally different, but in the aspects of community building and participation - the same.