Creating an efficient local marketplace is a problem yes, but building community isn’t so much about buying and selling things faster as it is about making communication between people easier, faster, and better.

If we go back 60-70 years, what forms of communication did normal people have? Normal people could talk on the phone, write letters, talk on shortwave or HAM radio or walkie talkies, write articles or stories in newspapers, books and magazines, make home movies with hand held cameras, or large scale movies with large cameras and film, with the right tools and privileges produce and broadcast television shows. We could create art and put it on display too.

We have all of those established ways today, but if you add computers into the mix you and I can talk to each other in many new ways right?

If normal people all have computers, the education to use them and the support to maintain them, we can communicate in news ways for little to no cost. We can communicate via instant message, email, discussion boards, voice over IP (skype), videos, audio, personal websites, blogs, photos, intranets, portals, ecards or message systems, comments on blogs or website posts… you name it and we can almost always do it with computers.

Imagine a normal classroom, an organization, a neighborhood, a government, family, friends. When 60-70 years ago these people and groups could only exist efficiently if they were in the same geographical region… now look.

I can meet and have valuable interactions with people on the other side of the earth if I want to. Right now. You and I can collaborate on a film, write and comment on each other’s blogs, we can create an audio or video program and talk about anything we want and broadcast it to millions of other people all over the world.

Content. We can create content, and connect to other content. That makes us smarter. Being smarter means that we can create new and better things and connect in better ways. We can include everyone too, people that don’t have the means to do it themselves. All of the people in the world can talk, contribute, be a part of something great together. We just have to know about these ways, know their value, potential.

I’m not saying that we’ll live in peace, I’m saying that we’ll start to understand each other and our world.

I can’t see how it could break us apart if we do it right. So how do we do it, and do it right?