A world of groups

To imagine a giant cafe, containing millions of people, provides a useful metaphor for the Internet, but, the idea of trying to find particular people to talk to in such a place seems a daunting prospect. After all, the cafe would need to be the size of a very large city, perhaps even the size of a country, to be able to contain all the people using the Internet.

Fortunately, the huge size, and the large number of people, isn't as much of a problem as it would first appear. In large cities, people with similar interests tend to congregate at recognised meeting places. This spontaneously emerging order seems to be a natural characteristic of large populations. An event or particular set of circumstances can associate a physical location with a special interest. Once established, this acts as a magnet to attract others.

This instinctive tendency of large populations to gather into groups of like interests also happens on the Internet. People tend to congregate in various list serves, special interest group forums and news groups. This greatly reduces the problem of finding the right sort of people to make contact with. If you know what kind of knowledge you need you can simply go to an appropriate community where such contacts are liable to hang out.

There are tens of thousands of these on line communities on the Internet, but, they are easy to find by using search engines or asking around. If you can join at least one email group, you can post a query asking about others. People are extremely helpful in this way and readily respond with help and guidance. A day or two of investigation and asking questions will soon locate, from among the tens of thousands, the groups that are likely to contain just the kind of people whom you'd like to establish contact with.

Communities and groups on the Internet are much easier to join or leave than their equivalent in the bricks and mortar world. There are no formalities to observe. Groups can be joined or left without anyone even noticing. Group members are effectively cloaked in invisibility until they actually make a contribution by posting an e-mail to the group There is no equivalent to this situation in the bricks and mortar world, so, for first time members it is a novel and highly edifying experience.