Americans tend to have fewer close confidants today than they did two decades ago -- but that isn't because they're all huddled over their computers playing World of Warcraft or reading the Volokh Conspiracy.
New technologies create alternative points of connection, according to the educators Laurent A. Parks Daloz, Cheryl H. Keen, James P. Keen, and Sharon Daloz Parks, who predicted a new commons in Common Fire: Leading Lives of Commitment in a Complex World (Beacon Press, 1996). With historical roots in the town green, the commons is "a place where the diverse parts of a community could come together and hold a conversation within a shared sense of participation and responsibility," they suggest.
Real-time Web keeps social networkers connected
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