Francoise wrote,
> But the issue seems to be the opposite, that some
> people feel that e-communites do not exist or exist ambiguously
> because there is no F2F diminsion readily availalble.
Virtual communities, imagined communities, fictitious communities,
long-distance communities -- all these phenomena have existed for many
thousand years. We are hearing voices, seeing images, talking to ghosts. My
friends are distributed in space, time and meaning. I vote in a block with
people whom I've never seen or heard, or smell, or touched (so called
"neighbors"). We live in the giant semiosphere. The boundaries between
mediated and non-mediated, between "face" and "non-face" are fuzzy and
dynamic and reflexive (i.e., socially constructed). I've heard that some
people even have sex on-line but it, itself, can be a virtual fact.
Eugene