>Eva
Come to think of it, that's what happened to Habermas's ideal speech
community, once critics began to look at it carefully. Robert Frost wrote
that there was something in us that didn't like fences. On the other hand,
we keep building them. But for now, I will happily go on imagining that we
are all sitting in a nice dingy coffee-house, having yet another Samuel
Johnson-style discussion. As we are all disembodied here, relatively
abstract beings, it's easier not to be troubled by vehicles or lack of them,
houses vs. garrets, tenure vs. teacher vs. degreed McDonalds frycooks, etc.
I suspect there are many more people here than were in your building's
socio-culturally fractured coffee-room. Which goes to show that, even if
there are needs for clumsy things like introductions, there is quite a lot
to be said for computer-mediated communities.
Doug