The Future Does Not Compute

Networks and Communities

This is Chapter 6 of The Future Does Not Compute: Transcending the Machines in Our Midst, by Stephen L. Talbott. Copyright 1995 O'Reilly & Associates. All rights reserved. You may freely redistribute this chapter in its entirety for noncommercial purposes. For information about the author's online newsletter, NETFUTURE: Technology and Human Responsibility, see http://www.netfuture.org/.

It is not surprising that in a culture widely cited for its loss of community, the word “community” itself should come in for heavy use. The more we lack something, the more we may be fascinated by fragmentary glimpses of it. A starving man will discover food where the well fed see only garbage.

One doesn't, however, expect the starving man to pretend his meal is a catered banquet. And yet, the magical delivery of precisely such transformed goods seems to be what many expect of the electronic network. For example, the publisher of The Internet Business Journal, Michael Strangelove -- articulating the faith of a thundering host -- is sure that “the Internet represents a return to the fundamental dynamics of human existence: communication and community.”/1/

I need not remind you of the special affinity wanderers on the Net seem to have for this word “community.” We hear about online communities, the Internet community, global electronic communities, virtual communities, and so on. There are senses in which this usage is perfectly reasonable: human community in some form ...