another point of interest I thought of was relating to any new neighbours that move inot the area – they could be entirely virtual that is they may never have physically met any neighbours but just decided to join the online community….this could, depending on how often people move in and out of your area, mean that the nature of the community will change and perhaps even become totally virtual where noone has physically met any oth their neighbours…..mmm really interesting. thanks Caroline I enjoyed my virtual tour of your community.

I don’t agree with your claim that a cyborg has never been human – I think what Haraway is arguing, anyway, is that a cyborg is a human which has cybernetic (or animal) ‘parts’, and that blurring the boundaries between human and ‘not human’ creates a new kind of being (the cyborg) with new political possibilities.

The posthuman that More describes above is different from Hayles’ posthuman – Hayles gives posthuman status to pretty much all of us, whether or not our bodies have been changed – “the defining characteristics involve the construction of subjectivity, not the presence of nonbiological components” (p4).

If you’re interested to learn a bit more about the concept of subjectivity (as Hayles is using it), I like Woodward’s definition: “The words ’subject’ and ’self’ are… often used interchangeably in cultural studies and in social and political theory. Preference for one or other of these terms is often indicated by the distinction between a ’subject’ which is produced and controlled by social institutions and discourses and a self which has particular desires, anxieties and needs” (2002, p 2-3)

(Woodward’s whole book, ‘understanding identity’, is available as an e-book through the library – http://www.netlibrary.com.ezproxy.webfeat.lib.ed.ac.uk/ – just log in with EASE and search for Woodward).

For me that sense of otherness was quite significant for this community and seemed to emanate from a sense that board members define themselves as different and superior from their own idea of an other community of threats and danger. I thought perhaps this feeling was coming from the specific single thread in this ethnography but the board administrator – who it was great to get comments from in this short time span btw – seemed to confirm this identity. I think what I was intrigued about, reading the postings, was just who, on a new estate, the teenagers discussed were likely to be. Presumably they are also part of the same physical community? I found something a little concerning about the way in which board members seem to be creating a shared narrative around their fears without any sense of how representative the community on the website were compared to the physical community (especially given the relatively small number of visitors to this site – I got the sense that the physical community would be of several thousand members but am not sure about that).

The site’s origins in Neighbourhood Watch do make sense of much of the above but I think it’s interesting that the site’s branding and design imply a very constrained idea of community – that it is about vigilance, discounts, and fuel costs. I can see that the postings to the forum are a little more varied but I thought it was strange that there was no section on the site for more positive aspects of local life. In a longer term ethnography this could be interesting to explore further as I think there is a disjunct to the sense of community felt by board members and portrayed by them.

I liked your idea of looking at just one thread, Caroline, and getting input from the site administrator.