Everything relies on links.

A chain link fence subsists of loops of metal wrapped around each other.
A telephone call connects one talker to another.
An academic paper is composed of a collection of ideas that are written in an order of explanatory expansion.
The days of the week form a linear progression: squares of time divided and pressed together on the pages of a calendar.
In copulation, physical bodies establish communion between the sperm and egg, keeping their species in existence.
A train relies on the support of the track as the wheels stay in contact with the strips of metal.
A student can learns material by listening to the spoken words of the teacher.
Prayer, meditation, Sufi spinning, gospel singing and sacramental ritual are all used as links between human consciousness and the Divine.
A web page is accessible by clicking on a link from another connecting URL address.
Written words are created by the contact of pencil to paper or fingers to keyboard.
A homerun is made after the bat hits the baseball.
Interactive exchanges keep MUDs in operation (i.e. "Multiuser").

Communities are organized bodies of linked individuals, connected by somatic relationships or by threads of communication. Technology sustains a fibril web of cerebral intercourse, a pulsing network stretching over the whole globe, zapping its way through all geographic, political and social boundaries. Millions of links have sprouted, bloomed, throbbed with life, and then wilted. The fresh fondnesses find finality as fast as frosted flakes grow soft in milk.

Who is the higher power in this virtual reality? What force determines the order of links and draws the map of interrelations? Will this technological family evolve as naturally as biological lineages? According to Michele H. Jackson, the connections are established by strategic calculations:

"There are no natural or automatic links between information... The use of the link in the creation of Web structure enables the designer to control the potential ways a user can move through information. Web designers might choose to use a very limited number of links, or to use them in a traditional indexing fashion, or to use them to encourage linear progression through the material, or to use them conscientiously to approximate an associative experience for the user." (from "Assessing the Structure of Communication on the World Wide Web")

While only representing a fraction of the entire electronic structure, web designers in fact play a critical role. For they are granted the chance to shape the variables of the Net users' experiences by creating the contexts of their own electronic worlds. Their links are the framework that establish the vital infrastructures that then help mold the succeeding relationships of this ever-changing virtual community.

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