seeking and not finding real community on-line

To be sure, scattered attempts to construct real community in this complex technological society are always in the making. But we are bothered by what seems a far more pervasive tendency to simulate the completeness of proximate community through the ever expanding perfections of technology. In the relentless, full-color vibrations of the twenty-four-hour TV news, in the inevitable linking of homes and offices to the international superhighways of computerized information, and in the more specialized keyboard connections of like-minded e-mail network users, we seek the lost sacred links of community in cyberspace. But does not this frenzied search for constant connection through information also replicate Ahab's doomed quest for perfect knowledge of the whale as blank continent (only now the continent to be subdued is a simulation of the entire globe)? The skilled navigator of the computer "net" appears infected by the manic illusion that we can really "know" everything there is to learn "out there" if we can only keep up with the latest technological frontiers and tools for bringing them under control. Conquering the borders of cyberspace is, again, the frontier hunter writ large upon the electronic territory of the world.

The urge to build relationships is sacred, but our means are too often profane. The irony we confront  when walking through the hallways of almost any office building, seeing each worker plugged into the net, frantically piercing the blank wall of unknowing while the hallways, coffee lounges, and committee rooms stand empty reminds us again of Marion Woodman's charge that we are "addicted to perfection." Like any "good" addiction, which Estes defines as "anything that depletes life while making it 'appear' better," being "wired" makes us believe we are in sync with others and with the world. But like other simulated perfections in the hunter myth, the connections of the hyperreal are an ultimately empty substitution of our ego extensions for a community of Selves. (pp.  212-213)

from "Projecting the Shadow: The Cyborg in American Film" by Janice Hocker Rushing and Thomas S. Frentz