This document is copyright © 1996 NK Guy (tela @ tela.bc.ca).

If you cite this thesis please include its URL, which is http://www.tela.bc.ca/ma-thesis/). Thanks!

1.0 Introduction and Rationale.

The most rapid developments in human technology have taken place in the 20th century, and with these changes have come wide social transformations. Two of these transformations are quite paradoxical.

On the one hand great changes have occurred in the social fabric of traditional communities this century; changes that have served to divide and isolate people socially. Former agricultural population bases have shifted to urban and suburban settings. This increased concentration of settlement patterns, combined with large in-migration and population growth, has led to the disintegration of many traditional communities. People are increasingly isolated and cut off from one another, even as population densities grow.

On the other hand electric, electronic and now computer-based communications systems have brought people together in unprecedented ways. It may be easier to find out what is happening in distant cities and countries than in one's own immediate neighbourhood. McLuhan's global village is becoming more of a reality every day.

Computer-mediated communications systems are a relatively new phenomenon, having been deployed widely in only the past decade. Yet they are already having a significant impact upon geographically defined human community.

1.1 Thesis Statement.

This exploratory thesis examines locally-based, owned and controlled computer-based communications networks - community networks - in terms of their potential ability to enrich community life; to help build local community. The focus is on selected organizations, primarily in British Columbia. Particular attention is paid to some of the factors helping and hindering the success of these organizations, especially as identified by individuals involved with those organizations.

The question examined, then, is in what ways and to what extent have community networks contributed to the goal of building local community?

1.2 Thesis Structure.

The first chapter briefly outlines the rationale for the study, the thesis statement, the structure of the work and definitions of key terms.

The second chapter constitutes a literature review of some basic concepts and definitions of human community, particularly as they apply to community networks.

The third chapter outlines the research methodology used in this thesis, and presents the formats of interviews with various key individuals involved with the organizations studied.

The fourth chapter of this thesis consists of an essential overview of the computer-mediated communications (CMC) technology used by most community networks. It also discusses how some of the characteristics of these networks differ from other, particularly commercial, systems.

The fifth chapter consists of a historical review of the community networking movement, beginning with early efforts in the United States, but dealing largely with the Canadian experience in this area.

The sixth chapter consists of descriptions of the selected community networks that make up the primary research of this thesis. These are the Campbell River Community Network, the Mount Arrowsmith Community Network, the Nechako Network Access Organization, Nanaimo Online, the National Capital FreeNet, the Prince George Free-Net, the Vancouver CommunityNet and the Victoria Telecommunity Network.

The seventh chapter is a description and an analysis of the interviews with the key respondents. The chapter includes an assessment of the potential of the community networks to realize some of their stated goals.

The eighth chapter is an examination of some of the areas of concern faced by community networks. These include economic pressures, internal organizational issues and some fundamental questions concerning the underlying technology of CMC itself.

The ninth and final chapter concludes with a summary of the findings, namely that community networks do not realistically serve to build local community, but that they have the potential for serving as a form of online public expression.

1.3 Definitions.

1.3.1 Community Networks.

In brief, a community network, as described in this thesis, is a public computer-mediated communications (CMC) system designed to serve the general needs of a geographically-defined community of people. Systems of this kind operate under a variety of names - FreeNets, public access networks, community computing centres, civic networks, telecommunities and so on, (Morino, 1994. Schuler, 1995) but are referred to in this thesis simply as 'community networks.' The computer-mediated aspect of the concept is of great importance. In this thesis the term 'community network' does not refer to social connections between people, but to a certain type of computer-based communications system used for social interaction.

However, community networks are more than simple computer-based services. Owned and operated by non-profit organizations, community networks are driven by a general set of social goals, not strictly by technology or economics. One of the goals is the reinforcement of a sense of local community in today's fractured social milieu, by providing an open forum for citizen communication. Implicit in this view is the assumption that the technology should be used for collective community purposes, not solely for the private pursuits of individuals. Other goals include education (computer literacy), promoting democratic ideals and ensuring that there will be some form of publicly owned resources, or a public voice, on the developing information infrastructure.

It is the first of these goals - reinforcement of a sense of local community - that will form the main emphasis of this thesis.

1.3.2 Computer-mediated communications (CMC).

CMC is a broadly defined concept that encompasses all forms of human communication that rely upon digital technology. It does not include more conventional forms of electronic media such as telephony and conventional video broadcasting. Telephony and video do rely on digital hardware but have not done so historically, nor do they necessarily feature digital equipment at all stages of the system, particularly at the user's end. CMC also implies, but does not always require, technology that can be used for individual (one to one) communications in addition to broadcast (one to many) purposes.

Popular synonyms for the kind of technical, social and mental space formed by CMC technology include 'the online world,' 'the Net,' 'the network' and, drawing upon the terminology of William Gibson's popular science-fiction novels, 'cyberspace.' (Gibson, 1984.)

The most common mode of operation for CMC follows the basic model developed in the 1960s with the advent of timesharing computers. This model is essentially that of a human operator using a centralized multiple-user computer upon which information is stored. The computer technology serves simultaneously as conduit, repository and display system for the largely text-based human communication.

1.3.3 Community networks as a form of CMC.

Community networks are one manifestation of modern CMC that represent a deliberate and conscious attempt to present an alternative to the almost entirely commercial and privately-owned systems currently in place and planned for the future. Although contemporary CMC technology was initially developed in academic research laboratories, most systems today are commercial in nature. From a technological point of view community networks are not dramatically different from their commercial counterparts, although they tend to be much less technically sophisticated for economic reasons. However, the purposes and social organizations that they represent are very different. These differences are discussed in detail in the next chapter.

It is important to note at this point that this thesis is largely concerned with non-profit and mainly volunteer-driven community networks. It does not deal with civic community networks owned and operated by a municipality primarily as a means of communicating with the citizenry. This is because such civic systems are generally part of the overall communications infrastructure used by municipal institutions rather than an agent for social change run by volunteer organizations, as community networks are.

1.3.4 Community building.

In this thesis 'community building' refers to promoting understanding and communication amongst people living within a physically-defined community. Traditional social relations within physical communities have been radically altered since the development of the automobile and modern communications systems. The question of what forms of community building can help improve social relations in fractured communities is one of great importance to society today.

In the 1960s US activist Saul Alinsky recommended that the disadvantaged work together to fight entrenched power structures through abrasive activism. (Alinsky, 1971.) Community building thus tended to focus around establishing something of a common target against which a group of people would struggle. More recently John McKnight, also based in Chicago, has worked on establishing self-reliant communities by having people focus on what they have to offer others; their 'gifts.' As government cutbacks result in a waning influence of government services, this approach to enhancing localized community through internal self-reliance is becoming more popular with activists. (Cayley, 1994.) McKnight and John Kretzmann write: "It is increasingly futile to wait for significant help to arrive from outside the community. The hard truth is that development must start from within the community and, in most of our urban neighborhoods, there is no other choice." (Kretzmann and McKnight, 1993, p. 5.)

Community networks are promoted by many as being a valuable tool for helping to build this kind of community self-reliance by being both an accessible and affordable conduit for information and by being an open forum for citizen discussion. (Schuler, 1996.) Mario Morino describes community networking as "a process, facilitated by the tools of electronic communications and information, that improves and magnifies human communication and interaction in a community." (Morino, 1994.)

1.4 Community networks and Geography.

Community networks are inextricably tied with spatial concepts of geography. One highly vaunted aspect of modern CMC technology is that it is said to eliminate previously immutable barriers of time and space. Whether through such elaborate futuristic concepts as virtual reality - computer-generated simulated fantasy worlds - (Rheingold, 1991) or through more technologically feasible concerns related to the changing nature of perceived space in a world of instantaneous long-distance communications, CMC is held to challenge or even undermine humanity's conventional notions of place and physical being.

This it does for at least two essential reasons. First, the existence of extremely rapid long-haul digital networks means that data can be transmitted halfway across the world in virtually the same amount of time required to transmit it across the hallway. In this context physical proximity is irrelevant. Proximity is defined by the number of hops to a router or microsecond transmission delays. Additionally, the network - at least in industrialized nations, where it is widely deployed - has a kind of organic ubiquity. John Perry Barlow describes these phenomena well when he writes:

Cyberspace, being a region of mind rather than geography, is simultaneously everywhere and nowhere. There are no national borders. The only boundaries which are significant are those which one crosses by entering a password. The location of those systems is irrelevant. What difference does it make that the actual whereabouts of a hard disk is, say, California, when one may as easily actuate its heads from a keyboard in Berlin as from the desk it sits on? The Internet is essentially one great machine (or, better, organism) all elements of which are continuous if wide-flung. (Barlow, 1994a.)

In a sense, Barlow's comment about the organic nature of cyberspace can be seen as echoing McLuhan's earlier theme that "It is a principal aspect of the electric age that it establishes a global network that has much of the character of our central nervous system." (McLuhan, 1964, p. 302.)

Second, CMC can be asynchronous in nature. Synchronous forms of communication, such as the telephone, require both the sender of a message and its recipient - or a proxy for the recipient such as an answering machine - to be available at the same time for the transmission to be effective. Asynchronous communications, such as email (electronic mail), permit messages to be sent to a remote host for recovery by the recipient at a later date or time. (Harasim 1993, p. 23.)

These revelations, although important, are not unique to CMC. Similar observations were made decades ago when telephone and, before that, telegraph technology became available. However the widespread adoption of CMC and the ease and rapidity with which digital information can be generated, packaged and distributed is unprecedented. CMC also holds the potential for relatively rich forms of information content, such as typeset text, images of photographic quality, audio and live video, to be disseminated with the ease of plain text.

This ability rapidly to transmit such varied kinds of information content, combined with the flexibility of CMC systems, is thus said to bring with it the potential for changes in social relations, what John Quarterman calls a "global Matrix of minds" (Harasim, 1991, p. 35) and what Lee Sproull and Sara Kiesler refer to as a "network community." (Harasim, 1991, p. 107.)

But in contrast to this view of computer networks as involving disembodied consciousnesses projected into a non-physical virtual space, community networks focus largely on human communities defined by more traditional physical boundaries of space. The resultant conscious emphasis on place may thus represent an attempt to address some of the questions of human community that most implementations of CMC technology either ignore or claim to supersede. This occurs because proponents of community networks argue that community network systems be used as a tool - a means to an end - rather than a means in itself. And the end is frequently that of building local community. This seeming paradox of promoting the local using a medium that is said to destroy place represents an intriguing subject for study from a geographical standpoint.

1.5 Previous studies of CMC.

Although CMC often implies a deliberate undermining of the importance of place, little work in the field has come from a geographical perspective. There has, however, been much work done in other fields. Clearly the rapid and effective means of disseminating information embodied by CMC is likely to affect almost every aspect of social interaction. There is therefore enormous potential for critical social study of such an important technological development.

1.5.1 Technophilic views of CMC.

The earliest studies of CMC tended to be of an unabashedly technophilic bent. From this viewpoint CMC's implicit emphasis on the absence of place is held to be both exciting and overwhelmingly beneficial. The field of CMC literature is crowded with enthusiastic panegyrics on the virtues of computer networking. Freed of the wearying and parochial shackles of geography, these advocates write, computer network users are able virtually to express their individualities in ways heretofore unimagined. The unbridled hope and enthusiasm expressed in some of this work can be overwhelming and a little embarrassing in retrospect.

. . . cyberspace, though born of a war technology, opens up a space for collective restoration, and for peace. As screens are dissolving, our future can only take on a luminous dimension! Welcome to the New World. (Stenger in Benedikt, 1991, p. 58.)

In another paper in the same anthology, "The Erotic Ontology of Cyberspace," Michael Heim combines a wide assortment of metaphysical theories with brief excerpts from William Gibson's popular science-fiction stories. The resultant uncritical blend - "Gibson highlights this essentially Gnostic aspect of cybertech culture . . ." (Heim in Benedikt, 1991, p. 75) - seemingly views Gibson's writing as almost infallible documents of great predictive power rather than works of speculative fiction.

Indeed, the boundaries between fiction and thoughtful discourse on CMC become rather blurred sometimes. William Mitchell, for example, yearns for a world in which people have become cybernetic human-machine hybrids wired into a global communications network.

We will all become mighty morphing cyborgs capable of reconfiguring ourselves by the minute . . . Think of yourself on some evening in the not-so-distant future, when wearable, fitted, and implanted electronic organs connected by bodynets are as commonplace as cotton; your intimate infrastructure connects you seamlessly to a planetful of bits, and you have software in your underwear. (Mitchell, 1995, p. 31.)

Sexual imagery aside, one is reminded of how visionaries in the 1950s confidently expected us to be making daytrips to Mars in own our private rockets by the turn of the century.

Even more sober papers written only five years ago now seem remarkably dated, in large part because of very rapid changes in the field. As science-fiction author Bruce Sterling notes in the afterword to the electronic (online) edition of his 1992 non-fiction book The Hacker Crackdown, "Three years in cyberspace is like thirty years anyplace real. It feels as if a generation has passed since I wrote this book." (Sterling, 1994.)

More grounded in contemporary technology, but still highly optimistic about the future of computer networks, is what could be called the cyberlibertarian viewpoint, symbolized by such popular cultural phenomena as Wired magazine. This glossy US periodical has, since its inception in 1993, paid particular attention to issues of freedom of speech, privacy, government restrictions on cryptography and other related concerns that focus entirely on the rights of individuals on computer networks.

1.5.2 Technophobic views of CMC.

Not everyone is so convinced of the inherent values of CMC. A small contingent of critics has issued solemn warnings that CMC is essentially a dehumanizing technology; one that reduces the rich totality of human experience and social interaction to packets of coldly indifferent binary data. From this perspective the widescale adoption of CMC will lead to nothing less than an information dystopia; a case of massive societal illness resulting from an isolated and alienated citizenry locked away in individual electronic prisons. (Ellul, 1990. Roszak, 1986.)

Or, more ominously, CMC will provide the penultimate Benthamite panopticon; the best tool short of actual mind control for allowing a powerful technocratic élite to govern and direct society through total surveillance. In Nineteen eighty-four George Orwell presented a bleak cautionary tale of modern totalitarian society, complete with the ubiquitous monitoring of citizens via 'telescreens' mounted in every dwelling. "There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork." (Orwell, 1949, p. 6.) When Orwell wrote those words electronic video was in its infancy (electromechanical video having largely failed) and such two-way telescreen technology was pure conjecture but, as Mosco points out,

(the world of Nineteen eighty-four) is dystopia, a far cry from teleshopping or playing video games in Coral Gables, Florida. Nevertheless, the technology is the same. Orwell's screen is an advanced videotex device . . . Orwell's vision is the graphic expression of those who fear the use of videotex today . . . (Mosco, 1982, p. 3.)

We know now that building a network of total video surveillance as massive as the one described in Nineteen eighty-four would be an extremely costly and cumbersome enterprise. But as CMC becomes increasingly integrated into our lives other technological concerns are becoming apparent. For example, it is reasonably feasible to implement the technology required to scan for selected keywords that appear in a network data stream, then filter and store them; thereby creating unprecedented opportunities for silent surveillance. This is particularly possible because, at present, most electronic communication is not encrypted or protected in any way. Philip Zimmerman, the author of PGP (Pretty Good Privacy), a popular semi-underground encryption program, writes:

More and more of our private communications are being routed through electronic channels. Electronic mail is gradually replacing conventional paper mail. E-mail messages are just too easy to intercept and scan for interesting keywords. This can be done easily, routinely, automatically, and undetectably on a grand scale. (Zimmerman, 1994.)

However, Orwell's vision of a futuristic totalitarian state failed to predict the power of modern electronic media, as governed by corporate imperatives. It is this latter that Neil Postman describes when he writes that "Our Ministry of Culture is Huxleyan, not Orwellian." (Postman, 1985, p. 141.) From this point of view - perhaps more cynical and cautious than strictly technophobic per se - there are many dangers associated with increased commercial control over our economic system and aspects of our private lives, especially when CMC technology is applied.

For instance in May of 1993 William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, known for their 'cyberpunk' science fiction novels and ironically hailed by many Net users as harbingers of a wired future, made an address at a technology and education conference in Washington, DC. Sterling offered this prediction in his speech:

Kids need places where they can talk to each other, talk back and forth naturally . . . Kids need a medium of their own. A medium that does not involve a determined attempt by cynical adult merchandisers to wrench the last nickel and quarter from their small vulnerable hands.

That would be a lovely scenario. I don't really expect that, however. On the contrary; in the future I expect the commercial sector to target little children with their full enormous range of on-line demographic databases and privacy-shattering customer-service profiles. These people will be armed and ready and lavishly financed and there every day, peering at our children through a cyberspace one-way mirror. (Sterling and Gibson, 1993.)

In recent years much of the early euphoria generated by the sheer novelty of CMC technology has worn off; perhaps a combination of increased social acceptance of the technology and growing cynicism over the way in which it is being marketed and sold by large business interests. (Stoll, 1995.) In addition to this growing unwillingness to accept the breathless marketing hyperbole of CMC there appears also to be something of a backlash growing against the libertarian views held by many of the new communications technology's proponents. For example in July of 1995 the American publication Newsweek published a front-page story on what it referred to as 'Cyberporn,' or the proliferation of sexually explicit material on the Internet. The article was largely based on little more than a single, widely-assailed, undergraduate research paper. (Rimm, 1995.)

Concerns over the availability of sexually explicit material have been taken quite seriously by many governments. The US government, for example, enacted in February of 1996 sweeping telecommunications legislation that included broad controls on what it referred to as 'indecent' material on the Internet. (Communications Decency Act, 1996.) At the time of writing this portion of the Act has been successfully challenged in court by free speech advocates on the grounds that it interferes with US First Amendment rights to freedom of speech. {1} (Sloviter, D., Dalzell, S. and Buckwalter, R., 1996.) The US government has, however, announced its intention to appeal the temporary injunction won by this challenge.

This type of legal action has not been restricted to the United States. In May of 1996 French police jailed two executives in charge of the largest French Internet companies, on the grounds that they were distributing pornographic material by failing to restrict the sexual content being carried on their networks. (Associated Press, 1996a.) Other countries, particularly those associated with authoritarian governments such as Singapore, China, Saudi Arabia and Iran, are also trying to tighten the restrictions on their citizens' access to the Internet. (Busse, 1996.) Singapore, for example, is trying to force its Internet service providers (ISPs) to prevent the distribution of, amongst other things, material that spreads "permissiveness or promiscuity" or that "depict(s) or propagate(s) sexual perversions such as homosexuality, lesbianism, and pædophilia." (Singapore Broadcasting Authority, 1996.)

1.5.3 Community networks as a potential middle ground.

There is thus an enormous gulf between such drastically different viewpoints as represented by supporters of electronic communications on the one hand and its critics on the other. Community networks can be seen as a useful field of analysis in this context, as they often embody aspects of both viewpoints.

Evidently many supporters of community networks have hopeful and optimistic visions of the technology. They see it as having tremendous positive social potential for promoting human communication. Civille et al., offer this impressive list of benefits they see resulting from a civic-level networking of the US:

Yet even the most enthusiastic pæans to community networks are often tempered by the reminder that the current inequitable distribution of - and élite control over - the technology will lead to serious and negative societal repercussions.

In addition to a potential for social improvement, community networks frequently address questions of what Phil Agre calls a "communitarian" use of the technology, as opposed to the far more common "individualistic conception" of computer technology that is commonly assumed. In a speech at a BC Library Association conference in 1994 he noted that:

. . . computing is almost always, as a matter of necessity, something that people do as part of extended social networks. If all we see when we imagine computing is a person sitting alone in front of a terminal then we need to expand our vision and take an aerial view, asking the much larger and harder question of how communities take hold of computing and networking. (Agre, 1994.)

This thesis examines some of these tensions between the optimistic and pessimistic, individual and community, visions of CMC technology as seen by individuals working in the community network field.

1.6 Previous studies of community networks.

As noted above, little work has been done in this area despite the connection between human geography and the nature and goals of community networks. Three recent studies that examine community networks have dealt with questions of community development and urban planning, communications theory as it relates to government policy and public discourse in an online environment. Anne Beamish emphasized a largely descriptive survey of existing, primarily American, community networks, along with a brief history of the field. (Beamish, 1995.) Andrew Avis' focus was on the Canadian context, and included case studies of two Canadian community networks. Avis also concentrated on more evaluative issues surrounding the regulation of CMC technology. (Avis, 1995.) Most recently, Ann Travers analyzed online discourse in the public discussion area of Ottawa's National Capital FreeNet, focusing particularly on definitions of inclusivity in a public space from a feminist perspective. (Travers, 1996.)

The wider field of CMC itself has to date largely been the preserve of communications scholars and researchers interested in more sociological or psychological perspectives on the matter.

Communications scholars are often interested in the qualities CMC embodies as distinct from other communications technologies, often in a regulatory context. The increasing overlap in, or convergence of, previously disparate realms of electronic communications is also of particular interest. This type of research is sometimes seen in terms of large-scale trends of Western society, from agricultural to industrial to information-based economies. (Harasim, 1991.)

Sociologists and psychologists are primarily interested in the ways the new technology affects social structure and human interaction. Much work has been done, for instance, on the ways in which CMC influences the organizational structures of companies or on the ways people interact over CMC versus other forms of communication. Sproull and Kiesler, for example, have written extensively on the ways in which extensive use of CMC alters traditional power structures in corporations. Their research has also examined some of the new social phenomena that arise out of CMC, such as 'flaming' (online insults) and the apparent levelling of organizational hierarchies. (Sproull and Kiesler, 1992.) Sherry Turkle, Elizabeth Reid and Amy Bruckman have paid particular attention to the ways in which people interact and present themselves in online gaming environments. (Turkle, 1996. Reid, 1994. Bruckman, 1993, 1996.)

Much of the work in geographical areas concerning communications has not addressed CMC itself. For example Stanley Brunn and Thomas Leinbach, in Collapsing Space and Time, (Brunn and Leinbach, 1991) edited a series of papers concerned with geographical analyses of telecommunications technology. These studies had a heavy emphasis on economic globalization and the altering modes of broadcast media. There are, for instance, discussions of the changing nature of capital flows in electronic systems (Brunn and Leinbach, 1991, p. 149.) and mass media development in South America. (Brunn and Leinbach, 1991. p. 278.) The book is, however, pre-Internet in nature. It does not examine the dramatic impact on one-to-one - as opposed to one-to-many, or broadcast - communications afforded by computer-mediated communications.

In quantitative terms the most detailed studies of any community network were conducted by Andrew S. Patrick, Alex Black, and Thomas E. Whalen for Industry Canada, a Canadian government ministry. They have conducted three studies of the demographics and attitudes of NCF users. (Patrick, et al., 1996a-c.)

In one study they surveyed approximately a thousand users of Ottawa's National Capital FreeNet in an attempt to get a sense of the basic demographics of the system and a rough measure of user satisfaction. Their 1995 paper, entitled "Rich, young, male, dissatisfied computer geeks? Demographics and satisfaction from the National Capital FreeNet," is important reading for anyone involved in the field of community networks. In it they conclude that "The main finding of the current research is that the NCF users are not a specialized group in the community." (Patrick, et al., 1995.)

1.6.1 The need for study and the nature of this thesis.

There is thus a great deal of opportunity to examine online communications from a geographical or spatial perspective. There are tremendous spatial repercussions to CMC technology and, science fiction fantasies aside, people do not live in virtual worlds. We live in a very real world, linked together by increasingly complex communications systems.

These systems are likely to have tremendous inertia as well. Just as decisions made a century ago surrounding the nascent telephone infrastructure or the nation's highway system still have crucial consequences today, so too will today's decisions concerning CMC affect the future of human communications and thus society in general for decades to come. The institutional, political, social and technological momentum of these essential and ubiquitous technologies is extremely significant and long-lasting.

This thesis is thus important for several reasons. First, it constitutes the most detailed study of community networks in British Columbia yet undertaken. There are sixteen such networks currently in operation in the province, but the only studies of Canadian community networks to date have examined the National Capital FreeNet in Ottawa and the Chebucto Community Network in Halifax. This thesis examines community networking from a uniquely British Columbian viewpoint.

Second, this thesis considers community networks from a geographical perspective. It does so through an examination of the tensions between concepts of real (physical, place-based) and virtual (online) communities. The importance of the former in human social relations is understood by most people in an almost visceral sense, even as it is said to be under siege by contemporary settlement and migration patterns and by electronic media. However the latter is gaining a great deal of popularity as use of CMC increases. Additionally, some of the significant differences between large-scale urban community networks and small-scale rural community networks are examined. This is of particular importance because CMC technology itself is held to vanquish and render utterly irrelevant notions of space. Spatial significance is examined in this thesis within the context of the community networks studied.

Third, this thesis takes a middle ground between the frequently polarized debate as to the nature of CMC technology. In a sense, this debate can be characterized as one with technophiles on one side and technophobes on the other. The former are obsessed with the technology to the point that they do not recognize - or immediately discount the possibility of - inherent dangers in its widespread use. The latter are so suspicious of the new technological forms that they do not want to acknowledge potential societal benefits from their implementation. This thesis examines contemporary networking technology, with an eye both to the dangers and the benefits it may lend to society.

The next chapter begins with an overview of some of the background literature to a study of CMC in general and community networking technology as a form of CMC. It also includes a detailed examination of what is now known as 'virtual community,' or online social aggregations that are said to form on modern CMC systems.

onward to Chapter Two.