“My point is not that you can’t find compassion and communitarian values on the Net. You can. But you can find them just as well, and better, in a real community. One phenomenon I encountered on the Internet was that people would put words like ‘grin’ or ‘smile’ or ‘hug’ in parentheses in a note. It’s a code meaning cyberhugs, cybersmiles, cyberkisses. But at bottom, that cyberkiss is not the same thing as a real kiss. At bottom, that cyberhug is not going to do the same thing. There’s a big difference.”
—Mark Slouka, author of War of the Worlds: Cyberspace and the Hi-Tech Assault on Reality, in Harper’s Magazine, August 1995
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