Networking in (virtual) space

At times, my nine-month-old daughter wakes up late at night, gets past her mother's arm and crawls into the study. She knows she can find me there hunched on my table, peering at the monitor, typing, laughing, scowling, but engrossed.
She tugs at me, asking to be lifted. Then she, too, is gurgling contentedly, staring at the screen and merging seamlessly into a part of my life few people in the physical world know of.Invariably, my mind goes back 18 months when my wife and I made a trip to the doctor.
We suspected she had conceived. A touch here and a nudge there was all he needed to confirm what we doubted. He suggested a sonogram. Routine, he said. But the prognosis wasn't pretty. 6 weeks, 2 days. No evidence of FP, the radiologist scrawled on his letterhead.
What the bloody hell is FP? And what did it have to do with a viable foetus? Even as my wife sobbed herself to sleep, I went online to meet John Sinha. I've known him for a few years now as a mass of electrons who responds to my pinging. I have no clue what electrons look like.
But I believe he is a medical doctor by training who stopped practising medicine to start a BPO in Siliguri where he lives with his wife. In response to a few pings, this mass of electrons came to life at 2 am to take a look at a scanned version of the sonogram I sent him and to tell me fairly commonplace not to see the foetal pole at six weeks.
Just to be doubly sure, an hour later, I posted a query on Baby Centre (www.babycenter.com). In under half an hour, four nameless, faceless, pregnant electrons rallied around to take me through the subtleties of pregnancy. The next day, I introduced my wife to them.
Finding myself
The idea of a community, writes Howard Rheingold in his influential book 'The Virtual Community', accessible only via my computer screen sounded cold to me at first, but I learned quickly that people can feel passionately about e-mail and computer conferences. I've become one of them.
I care about these people I met through my computer, and I care deeply about the future of the medium that enables us to assemble. I am not alone in this emotional attachment to an apparently bloodless technological ritual. Millions of people on every continent also participate in the computer-mediated social groups known as virtual communities.
I agree. I believe I am among millions who now live at the cusp of two worlds physical and virtual. And I confess it is easier to belong in the virtual. There are a few good reasons.
Take the Iraq war. Personally, I don't know too many people who care much about it or for that matter, would like to engage in a discussion on the war. But people on www.iraq-war.ru feel passionately it.
I regret not having pursued medicine. I make up for it each time I get into a classroom at http://webcast.berkeley.edu. They host videos of some superb lectures on the subject by some equally superb teachers there.
Having done that, I head to my favourite channels on IRC to discuss what I just heard. Nobody plays my kind of music on radio. Ostensibly, it doesn't make economic sense.
If it is a question, answers on MetaFilter (http://ask.metafilter.com). Consider this: Except for an early obsession with E E Cummings, I know nothing about poetry. Can anyone recommend a good book to jumpstart my poetry literacy?
For that matter, is there a human equivalent to premium cat food? Both questions are adequately taken care of by an intelligent swarm.
When it is time to meet, I head to Orkut (www.orkut.com), look up interesting folks on groups I am a part of, and try to connect. If not Orkut, there is Ryze. And if that doesn't work, there is MySpace (www.myspace.com) perhaps the most visited site today.
I've used Place2Stay (www.place2stay.net) to offer my home to anybody in the world who's travelling to Mumbai for a few days. I've used it to stay with some interesting people in the Czech Republic, Romania and Austria.
And then, there is The Well (www.well.com). An acronym for Whole World Lectronic Link, this is one of the oldest online communities. I pay $15 every month for complete access to the site.
This is where I have formed lasting relationships and spent a few hundred hours over the last couple of years having meaningful conversations on everything from workplace stress to the pleasures of cooking salmon in rock salt.
Why, therefore, should my allegiance lie with a world where geography binds me? Why wouldn't I shift my allegiance to a world where I can slip in and out, just as easily as electrons zip in and out of existence?