"What will on-line interactive communities be like?" Licklider and Taylor wrote in 1968: "In most fields they will consist of geographically separated members, sometimes grouped in small clusters and sometimes working individually. They will be communities not of common location, but of common interest. . . ."
I repsonse I would like to say there exists no reason why computer mediated communication will turn into ."communities not of common location, but of common interest."
In its essense, the web can be regarded as a cyborgian extension of the human psyche. By harnessing the power of this tool, people can and do rebuild local communities. Communities that are barley existant in a world where people have replaced their human interactions with their television and their local public sphere/marketplace with carefully constructed global supermarketplaces such as walmart that we arrive at in our very solitary SUVs.
While the television, film, and video have created a society that shuns community interaction, the computer, and specifically the internet, can act as a tool to bring local community back together.
I am not just saying this to promote my own site. Computers bring people together locally on so many levels. Just look at IM, email and chat rooms. I would argue that with the advent of IM, especially portable IM, that people will actually end up spending more time of the day involved in human to human communication than they do know, and definately more than they did 10 years ago. I can persoanlly attest to the fact that portable CMC eventually starts to feel like a psychic connection.
And do people really suppose that most time spent communciating online is really only with far away strangers. I know so many people that spend hundred of hours communicating with people online locally, especially those in search of the perfect mate. They are using tools like friendster, date.com(this one is funy

The reality is that people will never find local community through film and video, unless the local community is based on a love for film and video. So put down your television and contribute your local online community, you never know where it will take you.