Connecting: How We Form Social Bonds and Communities in the Internet Age

Explores how we come to feel connected to those we have never met face-to-face.

How do we become connected to people we have never met in person? From celebrities to faraway relatives, from favorite writers to thinkers to people we meet on-line, we form a host of subtle, invisible, but very real social connections with distant others. In Connecting, Mary Chayko investigates how physically separated people manage to create a sense of connectedness-a "meeting of the minds"-and feel undeniably, if unexpectedly, bonded. Through dozens of personal accounts, the book considers the social "fallout" of connecting with absent others-the benefits and hazards-on our societies, communities, relationships, and individual selves. The result is a comprehensive yet intimate look at social bonding as it is rarely recorded: an examination of the bonds and communities we form across great distances, and even across time, in the age of the Internet.