It's not hard to get involved, and even easier to voyeuristically watch others as they get involved. I doubt that anyone really needs this page as a clicking off point. But I wouldn't be fulfilling my duty if I didn't include it, so here goes:

Growing Up Digital is a very interesting book. It has an equally interesting web site. Part of this web site is devoted to Community, and one section of Community is (you guessed it) forums. The forums at the site are organized around the topics raised in each chapter of the book. Readers/surfers are invited to post their opinions on various questions that are raised. Since much of the book is devoted to examining the interpersonal connections that develop between digital youth, one might expect the forums section to be a lively area of activity. It isn't. It's not that there aren't any postings - there are. But the vast majority of them seem to be from one timers: people state their opinions and move on. There are hardly any reactions/replies to postings.

Jesse Berst's Anchor Desk is a section of the vast ZD Net. It's geared toward a techno-literate user and carries almost daily articles on different aspects of the internet. In addition to Berst's reports, there is a section of the Anchor Desk devoted to Community. Two parts of this section are Discussion and TalkBack. The TalkBack section might best be described as "letters to the editor". People express their opinions and move on. The Discussion section is an almost unnavigable forum. For each topic the number of postings is listed, but there's no way to see the entire thread, and thus, unless you've got a great deal of time to go through the postings on each topic in order, it's very hard to make heads or tails of what's being discussed. People do reply to postings, but finding a reply seems to be too much of an effort to make getting involved worth while. I haven't found any significant interaction taking place in these forums, leading me to believe that the aspect of community that most comes to expression here is that of letting others know what you think.

The forums at the ORT Research and Development site (in Hebrew) are user friendly and allow the visitor to get an overall picture of what's happening in the forum before jumping in. (Admit it: you knew it was coming.) And sometimes there's truly a feeling of community. Of course here too users come and go, and perhaps it's precisely because we sometimes really get a feeling of having honest contact with others that we also discover how fleeting and exceptional a true feeling of community can actually be. I can't speak for others, but if for a couple of days a forum of strangers somehow unites into a community of commitment before dissipating and returning to it's original form, that's still something to be happy about.

Go to: Just browsing, thank you.