Polygonum cilinode: Multiple, virtual Harbins already exist in some ways, not only in the form of email lists, Yahoo groups, online workshop groups

Harbin ethnography:


... Such a virtual Harbin becomes an ongoing exploration of a kind of countercultural, Harbin freedom, and expressions of free speech, of which actual Harbin is the seed.

Multiple, virtual Harbins already exist in some ways, not only in the form of email lists, Yahoo groups, online workshop groups, e.g. HAI groups, and groups on social networking sites such as Tribe.com, but also in the form of eclectic, spiritual networks among people staying in touch away from Harbin property, all connected by Harbin's oneness. Some researchers have considered these as virtual worlds, albeit primarily not in real time, since the mid-1990s (Kollack and Smith 1999:5, in Boellstorff 2008:50). Yahoo groups, Harbin mailing lists, the School of Shiatsu and Massage Mailing List (SSM), Harbin Hot Springs' groups on Facebook, some made officially by Harbin and others made by visitors ...

While many of these forms of online communication are linguistic expressions of virtual Harbin, they all return, in some ways, to the oneness of Harbin place, where they have been inspired, or from which they somehow emerge....







(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/09/polygonum-cilinode-multiple-virtual.html - September 23, 2010)