This may be a tiny blip in a larger trend, actually. Jonathan Harris wrote an essay sometime back called World Building in a Crazy World (http://www.number27.or

This may be a tiny blip in a larger trend, actually. Jonathan Harris wrote an essay sometime back called World Building in a Crazy World (http://www.number27.org/worldbuilding.html http://www.number27.org/worldbuilding.html) where he argues, approximately, that social connection over the Internet has been moving towards the short and superficial for some time now, and has found an end-point in Twitter. I believe he's right - when you've hit Twitter, the only way to go is to swing right back to intimacy - to meaningful, private digital connections. The whole essay is well worth a read. Edit: Also, isn't the things that McClure is arguing for essentially what http://www.frid.ge/ http://www.frid.ge/ is doing?