> Are there any such communities today? Yes, there's Wikipedia and there are IRC channels (and to some extent still, Usenet). > [...]the world would have to

> Are there any such communities today? Yes, there's Wikipedia and there are IRC channels (and to some extent still, Usenet). > [...]the world would have to change to such an extent that those people couldn't (or for whatever reason wouldn't) use Facebook, Twitter, Stack Overflow. That world simply does not exist today. Why would the world have to change? Did it have to change for FB to exist and siphon users off of myspace? We just need the product / the infrastructure / the volunteer work to get some stuff done. It hasn't been done yet, but it's not an otherworldly idea. > do you think my mother [...] would happily use bittorrent-based systems tomorrow Which part of it would make her unhappy? Would she miss the corporate entity behind it? The decentralization? Or do you assume that FB's (highly complex by the way) UI is something that cannot be replicated in a sufficiently recognizable manner?