Software Inspection
Software Inspection
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软件检查
DOI：
10.1177/026839629400900310
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发表时间：
1994
影响因子：
5.6
通讯作者：
Peter J. Middleton
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Peter J. Middleton
这本书的副标题几乎可以是“Spod 的自白”，以采用公告板和虚拟讨论的用户用来称呼自己的俚语。 Howard Rheingold 基于他自己作为用户多年的经验，特别是名为 WELL 的系统的经验而制定了该指南。但莱茵戈尔德并不是社交能力有限的全神贯注的黑客。他在 20 世纪 80 年代中期加入了一个电子社区，因为有机会看到一个社会的发展、发展自己的惯例并学习如何最好地使用自己独特的沟通方法。他（现实生活中）的家人已经习惯了看到他与电脑进行认真的讨论，当他遇到这个社会及其成员时，他的描述是多种多样的、引人入胜的，有时甚至令人感动。足不出户，他就遇到了学生、医生、图书管理员和律师，其中许多人都有自己的故事。他目睹了历史的发展，参与了为社区生病成员筹款的活动，目睹了爱情的产生和破裂，在极端的情况下，他在网上结识了现实生活中的人。即使当他谈到此类系统是为孤独者设计的指控时，令人耳目一新的是，他拒绝贬低孤独的用户：“一个诚实的答案......是大多数人都没有非常迷人的生活”。在虚拟世界中，有许多社区通用论坛，用于提出专门问题、邪教讨论、实时聊天（最容易上瘾且可能对生产力造成损害），用户可以在对方输入文字时观看屏幕上出现的文字、色情公告板以及随之而来的道德问题和多用户地下城（地下城这个词的含义因人而异）。有些人隐藏在多重身份背后，塑造自己的个性，有时创建完全虚构的角色并加入网络，有时隐藏自己的性别（莱因戈尔德在这方面有点过于仁慈；实际上，大多数网络的男性用户多于女性用户，因此以女性身份出现是吸引注意力的一种方式）。这本书引人入胜地讲述了加入这样一个无国界社区的感受。虽然莱茵戈尔德显然对网络的可能性感到兴奋，但他最后还是看到了一些缺点，与其说是虚拟社区，不如说是一个对传播信息没有限制的社会（不幸的是没有提到英国数据保护法），而且传播信息的基础设施非常便宜。对于那些感觉被技术囚禁的人来说，他（强有力的）类比是圆形监狱，这是由杰里米·边沁 (Jeremy Bentham) 在 19 世纪提出的一座监狱，里面的每个囚犯都将受到持续的监视，但看不到其他人。尽管如此，莱茵戈尔德向研究人员提出的问题比他回答的还要多。公告板什么时候会让人上瘾？用户透露或隐藏自己的身份会产生什么影响？需要什么样的道德准则来控制网络上的交互行为？未来此类网络距离普遍接入有多远？莱茵戈尔德为我们提供了一个可读且令人回味的叙述，但它仍然是一个有价值的起点，还有很多工作要做。马丁·里奇城市大学商学院
This book could almost be subtitled 'Confessions of a Spod' to adopt the slang by which users of bulletin boards and virtual discussions refer to themselves. Howard Rheingold bases it around his own experience over several years as a user, particularly of a system called WELL. But Rheingold is no preoccupied hacker with limited social skills. He joined an electronic community in the mid-1980s, attracted by the chance to watch a society growing, developing its own conventions and learning how best to use its own peculiar method of communication. His (real life) family became used to seeing him in earnest discussion with the computer, and his description of this society and its members as he meets them is varied, absorbing and at times touching. Without leaving his home, he has met students, medics, librarians and lawyers, many with a story to tell about themselves. He has watched history unfold as it happens, participated in fund-raising for sick members of the community, watched romances made and broken and in extreme cases met people in real life once he had got to know them over the net. Even when he addresses the allegations that such systems are for the lonely, it is refreshing to see that he refuses to be pejorative about users who are lonely: 'one honest answer... is that most people don't have a terribly glamorous life'. Within the virtual world there are numerous communities general fora for asking specialized questions, cult discussions, live chats (the most addictive and potentially damaging to productivity) where users can watch words appear on a screen as their counterpart types them, pornographic bulletin boards with their attendant ethical problems and multiuser dungeons (the connotations of the word dungeon vary amongst different people). There are people hiding behind multiple identities, crafting their own personalities, sometimes creating complete fictitious characters and joining the network in character, sometimes disguising their gender (Rheingold is rather over-charitable on this; in practice most networks have more male than female users, so presenting as a woman is a way of attracting attention). The book is an engaging account of what it feels like to join such a borderless community. While clearly enthused by the network's possibilities, Rheingold ends by looking at some of the drawbacks, not so much of virtual community but of a society where there are no restrictions on spreading information (unfortunately there is no mention of the British Data Protection Act) and the infrastructure to distribute it is very cheap. His (powerful) analogy for people feeling imprisoned by technology is the Panopticon, a prison proposed in the 19th century by Jeremy Bentham where every inmate would be under constant surveillance but unable to see anybody else. Nevertheless, Rheingold raises more questions for the researcher than he answers. When do bulletin boards become addictive? What are the implications of users revealing or concealing their identity? What sort of ethical code is needed to control interactive behaviour on the network? How close to universal access will such networks get in the future? Rheingold has given us a readable and evocative account, but it remains a valuable starting point, with much work still to be done. MARTIN RICH City University Business School