The term corporate culture is used readily in lieu of the term corporate community and vice versa. This is what I believe has driven our generation in its view of the Internet. If we were to expand upon Boas and Benedict, we would say that political and organizational structure is what gives a community its cohesiveness. Let's look at several communities in light of our working hypothesis and examine the interaction between the members of those communities. A mailing list can be a vehicle for communication, a lifeline, or a commune or Utopian community of sorts.
All mailing lists suffer from high turnover and the potential for burnout.
Even modern-day Utopian communes perceive excessive turnovers of their memberships as threats. The mailing list examples include five different Internet communities to which I have belonged or currently belong. Some have Web sites and newsgroups that are either private or public, and they may offer other Internet services such as chat or FTP sites. Two of the lists provide just one of the many different communication outlets of established organizations, adhering to the definition postulated by Benedict. The other three lists represent the sole source of communication and interpersonal interaction for the group.