ABSTRACT
The old and the young in contemporary communities are isolated from one another in ways they were not in the arrangements of several generations ago. School is an obvious potential nexus for community innovation. The core function of community public schools is to evoke and guide learning and to prepare for the future in community networks, going right back to the Berkeley community memory project. This chapter focuses on Blacksburg Nostalgia forum that attracted a variety of interesting stories and reflections, most quite personal and informal. The stories posted in Nostalgia describe a time when Blacksburg was much smaller and more isolated than it was in 1995, when it was hosting one of the community networks of the time. More broadly, the projects could inspire people to think further about the premise of the Sims project that visual simulations could be employed as a medium for exploring and expressing interpretations of social and community issues and events.
