"Every Home Is Wired":
4 -- Towards a Strategic Progressive Rock Community
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Conclusion: A Global Metropolis
We have seen, then, that the environment that has created global mass-participation media like the Internet, and the environments that these media have created, are conducive to new forms of subcultural community formation and interaction. Such subcultures now have the ability to establish themselves to a large extent as institutions in their own right and in their own spaces, rather than as sub-groupings under an overarching society, since the mainstream ideals of that society are increasingly backgrounded; furthermore, under the influence of virtual localisation the subcultures are losing their ties to any geographical grounding. Contrary to early research, the technology of CMC systems does not overly impede these developments; it does, however, affect the forms and patterns of community interaction, both by blocking some traditional ways of expressing communal and individual identity and knowledge, and by opening new avenues for such central community activities. Bit 20
It has also emerged that the Progressive Rock community is at the forefront of this move to computer-mediated structures, largely due to its ties with Internet culture and ideologies as such: not only is there a certain homology between Prog fans and Internet users, but they also share a generally positive attitude towards technological progress and the exploration of new possibilities. Additionally, Prog benefits generally from the centrality of music in human culture, and the particular opportunities for the producers of music that are available at the end of the twentieth century. While in some aspects, such as its continuing male bias, the subculture is different from other cultural formations, it is likely that many of the online structures and forms of interaction now established by the Progressive Rock community will also be duplicated as other subcultural communities make the move online and claim their part of cyberspace. Bit 21

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© 1998 Axel Bruns