How is an IRC channel like a Caribbean street-corner?

My friend Biella, a tireless EFF volunteer who's also finishing a PhD in anthropology, studying hacker culture, has posted a really gnarly paper that she presented at the Digital Genres conference. The paper posits that IRC channels and Caribbean street-corners share a lot of conversational and behavioral norms, and are driven by much the same impetus. (The meaty stuff about IRC starts about halfway down — search for "IRC and Caribbean" in the page).

IRC and Caribbean street talk, both a result of diasporic realities,
are public spaces in which clever word play, performance, and
stream of consciousness conversation predominate. In the Caribbean,
the Diaspora was a historical moment in time that brought disparate
peoples together as slaves and indentured laboreres. Forced
over across the Atlantic with materially nothing, cultural
elements were revived and refashioned though such avenues as music,
language, food, and religion to produce the dynamic character that
now stamps Caribbean culture. Language and linguistic word play
became an important element given the constraints on bodies,
spatial movement, and time that slavery forced upon people

The Caribbean man-of-words currently inhabits various public spaces
such as the street corner, the town square, and the corner store both
in the Caribbean and in transplanted communities in North America
Street talk is a richly complex social and linguistic site for entertainment,
performance, the fabrication of legends, the cementing of friendships,
for learning and expressing masculine codes of behavior,
building reputation, and for making and unmaking political
and economic alliances (Abrahams 1983; Wilson 1973). Talk and
creative word play are king in spaces where men casually drop in and
out throughout the day,
mixing gaming with very public loud group conversations
with quieter more private conversations that might take place
"off to the side." Personal gossip mixes freely with meta-commentary
while talk beholds and enfolds a range of tones, emotions, and
topics. Play mixes alongside work and argument as business and political
deals are informally fleshed out. Found both in rural and urban
settings one neighborhood might hold a number of competing public
zones for street talk. Sometimes sweet, sometimes grotesquely humorous,
and other times spiteful, play and cleverness that often borders
on the fantastical mark this form of talk. Not particularly
"emotionally supportive" or grounded in much else but talk,
its authenticity as a real space for social life would never be questioned.