http://slashdot.org/features/00/12/15/166257.shtml
<http://slashdot.org/features/00/12/15/166257.shtml>
"The virtual community is the long-sought but almost-never-found New
Jerusalem that's touched the hearts and minds of some of the nicest, most
ethical people who've ever gone online. Freenet, mailing lists, MUD's,
Usenets and IRC's and IM and (even P2P) systems have mushroomed over the
years, but the Virtual Community was supposed to be a different kind of
space, a way to use the Network to connect people, to help them know and
sustain one another in previously inconceivable ways.
Although almost everyone who has spent much time online has occasionally
experienced this sense of community, it's generally proven impossible to
maintain in an ongoing or large-scale way, for either individuals or sites.
An ideal sought in part by 60s refugees trying to keep their societal dreams
alive was done in by the Internet's unexpected success, by the changing
economics of cyberspace and by vocal bands of articulate and aggressive
adolescents.
One of the articulate prophets for that new kind of place was Howard
Rheingold, a WELL mainstay and author of The Virtual Community, the book
that laid out the yearning for a humanistic virtual community, rather than
one purely technological or informational. The WELL, more than any other
virtual space, has evoked the possibilities of a wired community whose loyal
citizens meet, argue with, support and befriend one another in their work
lives, their personal struggles, even in their deaths. From the first --
perhaps by dint of the particular geographic, political and cultural cast of
the people who launched and inhabited it -- the WELL was unique. It still
is. Despite the stunning growth of the Net and the Web, there has never been
an online place like it. Increasingly, it seems there never may be. "
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