The Workshop report you have just read is a preliminary attempt to define an important new aspect of the future. It is intended to serve as the starting point for thinking and analysis by diverse groups as well as by the authors and their institutions. Those efforts will be aided by receiving feedback specifically from net users like yourself.

We are especially interested in learning of actual experiences where interaction on the net has led to building community, and where it has led to weakening it. "Community" as used here, refers to a communicating group bound by common values/interests and some degree of mutual responsibility. For example, community building through the net is evidenced by many specific examples of enhanced scholarly interactions through the rapidly-expanding Internet links. Examples of community weakening may not be so conspicuous, but hypothetically, for example may arise where discord in net-linked institutions (companies, universities) is facilitated by interactions over the local net, or where net access in traditional settings has accelerated the alienation of more outward-oriented individuals from the traditional community.

We are, or course, interested in other kinds of comments as well. Accordingly, we would appreciate your entering comments below. If you are using a Web browser program that supports forms, merely click on the SEND button when completed. If not, you may send them in the form of an e-mail to BCM@MARS1.GPS.CALTECH.EDU. Also you may Fax them to Bruce Murray, 818-585-1917.