The signs are everywhere. Each day brings new stories about the transformational power of cyberspace participation. Minority groups have become empowered, social movements have organized, and some third world countries have leapfrogged over decades to connect indigenous peoples through telecommunities. The ability to influence other peoples actions, based on their having read ideas broadcast world wide by individuals with access and motive, is a new, dramatic addition to the psychology of social change. Cybernauts have only each others ideas to pay attention to, words on a screen, devoid of tone and inflection.
Most cyberspaces start by a surrounding of an idea by people that want to discuss it.
Yet our need for affiliation transcends the intellectual nature of the medium, and emotional connections are made. In fact, people fall in love, and fight, faster when not inhibited by possible local repercussions. The imagination fills in what the senses do not report. The meeting, the social space, is of one mind to another. The medium is the written word.