> we still have fairly small communities, just now they're
> organized by something other than geography (and I'm not
> sure just what that something is).

Well, in the idealistic theory the communities are now organized by interest,
topic, general congeniality: given that place doesn't matter and you now have
everyone else in the entire (online) world to rub elbows with, you end up (of
course!) talking to exactly those people that you get the most mutual benefit
from talking to. Entirely different from mere accidents of geography.

In reality there's still a bit of friction in the system. *8) Who we know
about, who we read, who we talk to, is still to a greater or lesser extent
influenced by the accidents of who we've run into online, and who they happen to
know, and what we've stumbled across (or failed to stumble across) in random
late-night surfing sessions, or in URLs sent by friends in email, and who we
went to school with.

Still, it's probably easier these days for a random Devo fan on the Web to link
up to other Devo fans on the Web than it was for the sole Devo fan in West
Nowhere to find someone else to talk Devo with! Which is probably a good
thing...

DC