From Matt Kelland
Frans de Waal expresses concern about modern communities, where the trend is for work, shopping and living areas to be physically separated (8 October, p 52). He points out that this lack of central focus severely disrupts community building. What he does not go on to say is that the opposite trend is also increasingly common, and is at least as disruptive to our social systems for exactly the same reasons.
For me, as for many others, work, shopping and living areas are not separate: they are identical. I work from home via the internet and shop primarily online. I rarely have any actual need to leave the house, or even to interact with another human face-to-face (other than my family).
As the number of telecommuters and online shoppers grows, the danger is that more and more people will withdraw completely from their local communities in favour of their chosen virtual communities. De Waal points out that “we’ve been designed to… ignore people we barely know”. When we don’t interact with our neighbours because we no longer need to leave our houses, what will local communities be like?
Shepton Mallet, Somerset, UK
