sadpanda

Hoowee. I've been on the 'Net for a long time, from CompuServe back in the late 80s/early 90s. You'd think I would have a mountain of links and websites I go to all the time, but the truth is that I have a grand total of ten links in my links bar, and two of those are just webmail. One is a site traffic aggregator, another is a web publishing login, and another is just a product ranking site.

When it comes to communities, I'm involved in three. This place, my employer's message boards, and Tilted Forum Project. I suppose Slashdot counts as a fourth, but there really isn't a community there--all the posts are based on the rolling list of news items. Nobody really shoots the shit there.

For me, there's so much noise in the signal on the 'Net. I think we're all doing a better job of creating little motes in the storm, but it's taken longer than I would have expected. Baby steps, I guess. I think it will require a generation who was plugged in from the start, instead of just a culture. I watch the democracy of the Internet clash with corporate interests, and there still isn't a clear winner. There may never be. But I think we'll find out sooner than we think.