What I mean by it is the dynamics of the current and rapidly mutating electronic environment in which we're working and playing. It's very exciting playing in a space we don't understand. But unless we temper that excitement, we're going to be unable to take full advantage of the opportunity to mould a more pleasant future for ourselves. I believe that we need to undertake a serious appraisal of our emergent cyberculture. The kind of analysis that I'm looking for would provide an understanding of the various components that make up culture in electronic environments.
Threads are sequences of related transactions.
Groups are sets of individuals who participate on a more or less regular basis and achieve a modest degree of stability over a modest time-period. By communities , I mean groups that attain reasonable size, are reasonably persistent, and are reasonably tolerant or pluralistic, in the sense of internalising debates about sub-issues within the group's area of interest. Individual, group and community behaviour each demand description and classification. This applies to both functional and dysfunctional behaviour. I made a start on some work in this area some time ago, with a set of mini-cases of dysfunctional behaviour .