Vritual communities aren't real.

I'll qualify that--they have some reality, but not that much, and they're neither fulfilling nor humane.

From EB, Deep Thought - July 22

Technophilia, Virtual Communities and the World of Ends
Dave Pollard, How to Save the World A lot of my friends and readers are technophiles. They believe that social networking and other technologies can make the world a much better place. I'd like to believe it, but I don't.

The industrial economy is rigged. It is not a 'market' economy or a 'free' economy. It is designed to reduce us to mere, insatiable consumers -- of politicians' promises with our tax dollars, of overpriced, imported crap products, of 'education', of packaged information and entertainment 'products', of health treatments etc. We are given just enough cash and credit to keep us addicted, and we are isolated from serious social interaction to make us compliant. No great conspiracy. That's just how the world works best when the objective is to maximize profit and GDP.

We are not people in this economy. We are consumers, taxpayers, students, audiences, patients. Numbers. Demographics.

The natural economy, the one we keep striving towards because it's, well, natural, is inherently social, which is one of the things we like about it. It engages us as customers, citizens, learners, participants, as peers in the collective enterprise of living and making a living. It disintermediates the robber barons, the corrupt politicians, the boring teachers, the mindless media, and healthcare professionals who profit from our illness. They are not needed in a natural economy. There is no place for them.

...Ultimately we will have to abandon the illusion that we can be part of a global, virtual, ever-changing 'electronic' community, that we can be citizens of the whole world, that social networks and technology can change the world. Eventually we have to come back to place, to true community, and make it work, face to face. (19 July 2007)

An interesting perspective on the future of education:

Back from the Future
Scrapping Institutional Education in Favour of Community Apprenticeship Learning
Gustavo Esteva, personal website (date?)
Recommended by Dave Pollard ("How to Save the World" blog at Salon). He writes: in a recent post
A long but brilliant article by Gustavo Esteva, Oaxaca Zapatista adviser and friend of Ivan Illich, explains why sustainable intentional communities and self-managed community-based learning go hand in hand, and why the latter is needed before the former is possible.
Short bio of author Esteva by David C. Korten:

Gustavo Esteva is an independent writer, a grassroots activist and a deprofessionalized intellectual.

He works both independently and in conjunction with a variety of Mexican NGOs and grassroots organizations and communities. He has been a key figure in founding several Mexican, Latin American and International NGOs and networks.

Though not an economist by training, he received Mexico’s National Prize of Political Economy for his contribution to the theory of inflation, and though not a sociologist was President of the 5th World Rural Sociology Congress. He also served as President of the Mexican Society of Planning, as Vice-president of the Inter-American Society of Planning, and served as Board Member and Interim Chairman of the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development.

In his early career, he held senior positions in both private business and government, and was destined for a distinguished career within Mexico’s establishment. He decided, however, that solutions to people’s problems could come only from the people themselves and has since dedicated himself to their service....

Another essay by Esteva: “Rupturas:” Turning Points
Spanish language website-BA