ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION The advent of the Internet helps to focus a question that has been asked for over a decade: what do computer-mediated communications (CMCs) mean for social relationships? Answers may be offered in a highly contentious form, as in: ‘the Internet portends new kinds of networks and a transformation of society as we know it.’ There is no shortage of such extravagant claims, especially in the pages of those magazines that aim to sell new equipment and software. Nor is there any shortage of those who believe such a transformation is taking place and who exhibit what Kroker and Weinstein whimsically call the ‘will to virtuality’ (1994:163).
