ABSTRACT
No discussion of community today can be complete without some consideration of the role technology plays in reshaping social relations. The implications for social relations of the new texting culture in which young people grow up are only beginning to be explored. Since Marshall McLuhan’s The Gutenberg Galaxy in 1962, social thought has entertained the idea of a global community of communication (McLuhan, 1962). To an extent this has now become a reality, but in a different form from what McLuhan imagined. Information and communication technologies have created powerful new expressions of community that go far beyond all hitherto known forms of community. In the past, technology was seen as undermining community, but today, in the age of soft technologies, community has been given new possibilities for its expression. This necessitates a new approach to community. The virtual turn has brought about a new approach on the related question of the impact of information technology on community life (Castells, 2001; Feenberg and Barney, 2004; Jones, 1995; Rheingold, 1993; Shields, 1996; Smith and Kollock, 1999).
