1 Community and CMC: the virtual absence of online communal being-ness

This paper proposes to examine the close relationship between the social sciences and offline interests (government, business, media, and all general non-CMC communities) as a key to investigating how the internet came to be what it is today. It argues that potential online educational benefits, as well as more general benefits from projects of social cohesion and community building, are being limited by the manner in which the internet is conceived and constructed; that for projects and benefits to be realised and to be potentially available to governments the net needs to be conceived in a different manner. This paper seeks to understand why the discursive formation of „community of interest‟ has come to dominate and shape the contemporary internet. It argues that this domination limits the possibilities of CMC by giving privileges to certain relationships, principally uni-polar forms, and thus hinders the potential of the internet for educational and community building processes. Finally, it suggest ways in which a differently conceived CMC might encourage the internet‟s rebirth as a genuine social and public space