But there's a common thread in the way everybody uses virtual , too. There was a striking example of this in a recent story about the young man in Florida who was arrested for sending a threatening message via an Internet chat group to one of the survivors of the Columbine massacre. That seemed something of a stretch, even for a word as elastic as virtual . It's seems a natural extension of the frenzy for discerning new virtualities whenever a new icon pops up on a screen. But it also rests on a more general assumption that everything that happens on-line is unprecededented, and answers to its own virtual logic.
Virtual communities require a new geography, virtual companies require a new economics.
It's a whole new world in there.