community: moving from main street to the net?

I have always been fascinated by communities. Growing up, I was a part of many: school, church, neighborhood, sports teams, musical organizations, my family etc. All of these communities were fundamentally fueled by in-person interpersonal interaction. As I grew up, I observed and became a part of a different kind of community: a virtual one. Here, I could find like-minded people too. I could join a chat room community about raising horses, or a Backstreet Boys fan club... ok... I really was in one of those...

The point being, I was able to connect with people through a new, alternative medium. Now in college, I can take classes completely online or chat about politics with people from all over the world. The advent of MUD's is bringing people together in new worlds. I see in-person communities migrating and morphing into online communities. My question is, do you think that that one will consume the other? Will in-person communities dwindle until almost all community interaction is electronic or digital? If so, is this a good or bad thing?

A quote from the Sherry Turkle text:
"As more people spend more time in these virtual spaces, some go so far as to challenges the idea of giving any priority to RL (Real Life) at all."

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Angela Thomas argues in "Digital Literacies of the Cybergirl" that girls are using cyberspace to satisfy their desires for a different body or personality. My question is: Is this a good thing? I'm reminded of our WallE discussion, where humans sit in chairs, fed through tubes and clicking to interact with everyone around them. This never ending quest to satisfy desires: for money, food, companionship has WallE humans immobilized. It seems like they are losing much of what it means to be human.

Or are they?

"Our new technology enmeshed relationships oblige us to ask to what extend we ourselves have become cyborgs, transgressive mixtures of biology, technology and code. The traditional distance between people and machines has become harder to maintain."

This weeks reading left me with more questions than answers. I guess that's the point?