ABSTRACT

Communities have been founded and flourished on mining, agriculture, textiles, military bases, automotive manufacturing, iron and steel foundries, and other core industrial and commercial activities, so the cyberspace community is being nurtured by the core activity of processing information into publishable form. Businesses that are socially responsible can achieve much in cyberspace to advance their commercial interests as well as the more philanthropic contributions they make to their communities. Now several generations have ceased to regard newspapers as their prime source for topical information, and there is a crisis in some nations – the United States in particular – in literacy levels. The Telecottage Association is a prime source in Britain for information about telecommuting, and its pioneering telecottage shared computer resource centres have spread from rural into urban areas. Only in magazine publishing is there any significant up front giving away of information or products to generate revenue from a sustained relationship with the consumer.