"Maybe the Internet will change things further. Maybe one day the most important community you belong to will be a virtual one, and it won't matter wh

"Maybe the Internet will change things further. Maybe one day the most important community you belong to will be a virtual one, and it won't matter where you live physically. But I wouldn't bet on it. I would say that this is somewhat the case already, it's just that recognition online doesn't translate to the real world. Many people in open-source community wield as much power as the CEOs in Silicon Valley. Depending on what you've open-sourced, you have power over the powerful. Linus Torvalds and the community he fostered for example is responsible for empowering many of the powerful in technology.