Sociable information spaces

Any computer on the Internet potentially connects you to millions of other people. The promise is that great communities will form, communities based not on accidents of location, but on common interests and concerns. This is, to a certain extent occurring. Usenet newsgroups and similar forums host thousands of discussions on a wide variety of topics. Conceptually, combining online forums and published materials is quite interesting. It brings the experience of sitting in a room with several people, reading the paper, and exclaiming over a particularly unusual event or arguing over a relevant point of politics to a global scale. It lets the reader see what ideas have drawn the most commentary and it transforms the wholly passive reader into a potentially active writer. It is especially interesting in the context of the Web, for here the boundaries between content and comment begin to break down