Is the Virtual Community of Any Value? If so what are the Advantages of Online Discussion Forums over Real Society?

There are some that raise warnings about the 'hype' surrounding the recent exponential growth of the Internet. They rightly observe that high promises were heard concerning previous media's potential for vastly improving education, accessibility of knowledge, and human community. They are correct to be cautious, but I feel that they also miss the vital differences between this medium; i.e. the Internet, and prior media. This is mainly due to the fact of media audience sizes and the widespread availability of information. That is the Internet has an infinitely larger audience over printed m…