| COMMUNITY CONSULTING | What community? |
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People may disagree with my notion of community in this context. But I feel a need to differentiate between a community network and a networking community. The former is more a physical representation that enables the latter. ,p> One also could make a case for the community as a somewhat indefineable entity that might shift, as in communities of interest, or interest IN community or in A community. And, of course, there is the difference between what people might consider a community and how political geography defines a community. So there are a lot of ways to think about this, which makes it easy to stumble and trip over our own understandings -- because there isn't just a single understanding!
That's the purpose of this discussion and this paper: to advance some thoughts about a common ground on which to consider this idea of a "community network."
What are its characteristics? And how can we articulate them in a clear and succinct way? This latter question is important because if we don't understand deeply and clearly what we are talking about, we cannot explain it usefully to other people.
Of course, I understand there also are limits to understanding; knowing is not always a rational experience but can be subject to the nonrational experience. But to the extent that we can understand this, I think it is a good idea to try.
There is the other difficulty of the limitations of definitions. By calling someone one thing, a choice is made NOT to call it something else. So a kind of membrane -- one hopes not an impermeable one -- is constructed around something when it is defined. Such is the nature of human speech, especially Western speech!
Nonetheless, I find merit in a functional definition that helps people understand the concept.
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