chess@... writes:
> 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.

Of course what's really happened is that geography used to be an
effective filter, now it's not, so we find other ways of filtering for
our communities. I've noticed that a list that used to be really
vibrant and wonderful and breaking down of international barriers up
through '98 or so hasn't had any traffic at all in weeks. Now the same
announcements I used to get via that list happen via private mailings
that you get only by happenstance, and there's no socialization any
more.

For a while I thought that weblogs would provide a way for people to
invest an identity in a community, but we haven't found a way to link
those like weblogs together yet.

> 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...

Ummm... Well... If enough of the Devo fans get together, they could
become a political or social force or something. Oh, for a time
machine, so I could go back to '93 and warn people.

Dan