The Victoria B.C. Freenet maintains a Gateway to Freenets and Community Networks via World-wide Web . Amy Bruckman is another must-read scholar of virtual communities. Here is a stash of Amy Bruckman's writing on virtual communities . A proposed national strategy regarding Civic Networking . The Benton Foundation looks at telecommunications policy from a public interest perspective in What's going on with the National Information Infrastructure Computer networks are only the tool.
Community is the task.
We May Think way back in 1945. Still worth a reading. Gender Issues in Computer Networking , by Leslie Regan Shade Elizabeth Lane Lawley has written a paper about The Sociology of Culture in Computer-Mediated Communication from the point of view of sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. Worlds Meta-FAQ is the place to start if you just got interested in VR and want to know a whole lot more. The River , a virtual community owned and governed by the users.