Although Castells is the authority on this, his definition of the network society seems wilfully maladroit; ‘the global web of horizontal communication networks that include the multimodal exchange of interactive messages from many to many both synchronous and asynchronous’ (Castells (2007) Int. J. Communication). Hampton and Wellman (2001) Amer. Behavioral Scientist 45, 476 have an interesting paper on Netville, Ontario: see especially pp. 491–2.