We elect Presidents and support companies because of what that little box tells us. It's a tricky question. If you are using something as a substitute for enduring human relationships, you have a problem. The way this technology expands, time compresses. My guess is that both forms will continue to survive and it will take multimedia to mature as a medium, the way cinema, for example, matured between Edison and Griffith.
Sociologists write libraries about gemeinschafts and gesellschafts.
But I think it will take some more years before we are clear on how a virtual community is and is not like a real community. When we have a clearer model of what virtual communities are, in terms of their impact on people's real lives, and their political impact, if any, then that will create a sufficient cloud of associations that people will know exactly what you mean and what you don't mean when you call something a virtual community. Since we're not being held to any chronological order in this discussion, I'll begin at the end and make my way, as best I can, from there. I think not, and here's why. While it may take courage to reveal ourselves to a virtual friend or lover, how infinitely more courageous to bare our soul to someone sitting across the table from us or lying next to us in bed.