Here you'll find a sampling of tools for connecting online including delightful musical collaboration sites, collaborative drawing sites, online galleries, weird experiments, corporate video-meeting tools, and office tools repurposed as spaces for gathering together.
I’ve always been curious about spaces for online connection. I mean, I’m infinitely curious about connection and online connection is no exception.
The first time I entered an online chatroom I was mystified by the stream of $trang3 u$3rnam3$ echoing an indecipherable question: a/s/l? Once I decoded the meaning, I was even more lost. The portals to the infinite are opening and this is the question we ask?
To me the curious glory of this thing is presence without shared embodiment, touching minds without seeing or being seen, co-existence in an imaginary space that we might co-create with our minds and machines and words.
Curious about privacy and security? Read about it in this handy '*privacy not included' resource from the Mozilla Foundation.
While making this list I hosted a series of online gatherings where we explored some of these tools, websites, and platforms together.
Since then I've been deeply thinking about the dimensions of these spaces. For example: is it a space for scheduled connection? Or spontaneous drop-in? Is it a space that flattens and dehumanizes? Or a space that humanizes and invites complexity? Is it a space of persistent identity? Or anonymity?
I'll write more about these dimensions soon.
Write me if you have spaces I should add to this list or if you have thoughts!
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Looking for stability instead of experimentation? I listed, compared and reviewed the most popular standard tools for meeting online.