I agree strongly with your "augment" point, and I'd just like to point out that online communications mediums provide opportunities for expression not possible

I agree strongly with your "augment" point, and I'd just like to point out that online communications mediums provide opportunities for expression not possible in other contexts. For one thing, text chat is a very different art from speaking. Any kind of timing or nonverbal sound has to be expressed somehow in ASCII. Most emoticons are thin symbolic standins for actual face-eye contact, but some emoticons and larger images posted on forums and the like express things you couldn't possibly express verbally. Now, you may say, hey great, so the next great leap in human relationships is fucking LOLcats. Well, people walk around saying Git 'R Dun to each other in the flesh. In my opinion LOLcats is at least a step up from that. Besides, that's just retarded superpopular images. Putting aside the base communication, what about file transfers? If I'm chatting with someone, it's trivial to hand over, in a sense, some image or mp3 or document or whatever. And we're both in a position to handle those files: play or edit them or whatever. So. Yea. Communication on the net is far more than just speech without inflection.