Electronic communities, or "digital villages," are building friendships between strangers across the globe.

     "There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."         — Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977.

     A new aspect of this digital era is "electronic communities" or "digital villages" where people on the Net gather as groups to discuss various topics.

     These e-communities are building bridges across the globe and making friends out of strangers.

     Mark Hull of Yahoo! Inc. said that online communities function in the same way other communities do. Yahoo! started hosting these communities in 1994 and has seen the number of users rise. "(E-communities) are changing society," Hull said. "We’re providing another way to maintain relationships just like the mail. (E-communities) are not a threat to face-to-face communication. They are a complement."

     Senior Jenny Sanders belongs to an e-community where she discusses her favorite music with people she has never met before. She likes the PC-to-PC communication.

     "People on the Internet don’t judge you on how you look or dress. They judge you on your personality," said Sanders. "It’s an escape to another level of consciousness — another world, if you will."

     It is in this new world that Columbia professor Michael Auben, writer of "The Net and Netizens: the Impact the Net has on People’s Lives," says that geography and time are no longer boundaries to communication. "Virtually you live next door to every other single ‘netizen’ in the world," he writes.

     Research from Auben’s findings shows that Sanders is joined by at least 10 million others who are connected online each day. Even though the countless faces of the people she interacts with are foreign to her, she still feels close to them.

     "I meet a lot of people that have issues on life, some of them have similar problems to me and we kind of help each other through it," she said. "It’s like venting to someone that doesn’t know you, but they do know you on a different level."

     But digital villages are not just for social activity. Sophomore Zech Rogers takes advantage of them for schoolwork as well.

     "(E-communities) help when I want to talk to people that like the things that I do, and what better way to research something then ask lots of people that talk about it," Rogers said.

     These communities are forums to express thoughts and ideas that can start from someone’s computer screen at home and end up as a discussion topic in another country. The freedom to express oneself on the Net has proven to help some people better function in society.

     Sanders believes that belonging to an electronic community has helped her relate to her physical community.

     "I’m more social with people now," she said. "I don’t judge people by how they look so much as how I judge their personality, and I know a lot of people say this, but they don’t mean it."

     "Netizens" of these digital villages cannot help but sing praises.

     From gaining insight on school work to building cross-cultural friendships, the wave of the future is here and has tsunamied past traditional communication into a global network of people sitting in front of their computers, just a click away from contact with someone thousands of miles away.

     This new tool is bridging the gap between strangers and making more people friends.

     And joining an e-community is as easy as surfing the Net. Simply go to an Internet search engine such as Yahoo!, AltaVista, or Lycos and type in your interest. There are scores of Web sites for almost anything imaginable and finding new friends may be just as easy as turning on your computer.

     So why join an e-community?

     "I’ve met a lot of interesting people and after years of communication, I have met up with them," Sanders said.

     "I have friends for life all over the world. (Electronic communities) are fun.  You meet some cool people, you can leave a conversation whenever you feel like it, and you just might change someone’s life."