1.Community – what's that?

The concept
In the most generic sense, community is a collection of living things sharing a common environment. The 'living things' may refer to humans, but not necessarily - we can also view the fauna of a lake as a community. On the other hand, the environment may be physical (e.g. same location, like a village) but increasingly also virtual (as seen at a large number of online communities where participants may never meet face to face).

Examples of (human) communities:
 * a number of people living at the same place (sharing the physical environment)
 * a number of people doing the same thing (may be physical or virtual)
 * a number of people having a common feature (may be physical or virtual)

One explanation: coming from Latin cum (with, together) + munus (gift) => a company giving gifts to each other keywords: common activity, also equality

Communities throughout the ages

 * the Flintstones pursuing a dinosaur
 * the Roman Forum
 * Middle Ages: a village, a guild
 * Modern Age: a firm, a trade union
 * the postmodernism: the cult of the Individual
 * the information age: return of the communities (best seen in but not limited to IT sector)

Charles Handy: return of the guilds

Robert Theobald: the mindquake

Weakening of the traditional community

 * losing the roots
 * the mishmash of worldviews
 * a man is the ... of the fellow man
 * the triumph of individualism
 * consumer mentality

... and the birth of new communities

 * new technologies
 * lots of choice
 * timeless time
 * increasingly unmet need for communication
 * educational aspirations, lifelong learning
 * lots of free time
 * needs for 'something real'
 * sometimes also direct altruism