Barry Wellman's short Communications of the ACM article on the development of online communities over the past 3 decades leaves you with a warm feeling.
Why? Because he concludes that while ICTs have changed the nature of our communities to more specialised, less-geographically based relationships overall our human contact isn't suffering. Our social networks are filling the gaps between face-to-face interactions and not taking away from them… Our networks are becoming ever more interlinked and much more person-to-person, so less place or institutionally based.
We're in the midst in some major shifts in the way social interactions and connections work. I've no idea where we're headed! Exciting.
