community and the internet

["Rick Walker/Loop.pooL" <GLOBAL@cruzio.com>]

my good friend, mark wrote:

"I totally disagree with the fact that the internet can act as
community.  To a small degree it can, and it does help people get
together, but the key is to get together.  (I met my wife on the
internet doing a search on Brian Eno!)  I think the internet is good at
augmenting social groups, but not a replacement or alternative to them."


I think one's personality has everything to do with whether the internet 
can
act as a community, Mark.   You and I (and everyone really) are really
different from each other in terms of personality.

 I booked a 10 country tour of Europe, playing with and dueting many of the
most talented live loopers on the continent and the British Isles with ONE
e-mail
to loopers delight (and dozens of posts and hostings of live loopers in my
own area)
and then six months of several hours a day e-mailing the logistics back and
forth.....lol.

I consider myself to be part of a small and, to my modest mind, growing
community of
musicians who feel part of a larger community than a purely local one.  I
feel really warmly (and I'm pretty sure it's reciprocal) to several people 
I
have never even
seen a picture of, let alone seen in person. We're in Sweden and England 
and
France and Italy and Switzerland and Canada and the United States and 
Brazil
and Japan.   We number less than a hundred so it's no big woop (except to 
us
and it is a huge woop to me) but we are definitely a community.

If you don't feel a part of that community or if you aren't attracted to
being part of a community that exists largely in cyberspace I hear you loud
and clear and can accept your feelings.

I'm living proof that it is not impossible however.

respectfully,  Rick