A tool for democracy, a reading reflection of Communities in Cyberspace

I was so impressed by the story about the city of Wilmington, North Carolina.The residents of the area were supposed to work with the housing authority to develop a plan for the downtown redevelopment.  However, they were not satisfied with the information the housing authority provided, so they asked for relief on the Internet. Many experts such as architects and lawyers in cyberspace provided them with the knowledge of how to deal with the authority and led them to successful negotiations. This story suggests the ideal state and uses of cyberspace.As the authors mentioned in the article, cyberspace offers a kind of parallel society to the real world. In that, people in different races, social status, and occupations anonymously interplay and create cyber communities. Everyone who has access to the internet can ask help with solutions from any region of the world. In the last six years since this article was written, we have witnessed many cases where people in cyber space have united, and by sharing critical information, have successfully
stopped the excessive behavior of some large corporations.such as the Nike, sweat shop incident. Many examples are found in Gilmore’s article, “The Gates Come Down”, that we read last week.Kollock and Smith wrote, “The Internet is used as a tool for change in a disadvantaged community, demonstrating a way to route around unhelpful government agencies to find people with information and expertise that they are willing to share.” The Wilmington case, or Senator Strom Thurmond case
that was introduced in the article shows that the cyberspace we live in as well as our real life, is heading in a more democratic, healthy direction.  It is about time for us to spread the access to the cyber community to the third world where people suffer from poverty, disease, and inhumane acts. We should establish a direct hot line to the world for those who can not rely on their governments, by expanding cyberspace access to those countries.Questions

1, What are the downsides and upsides for anonymity of cyber community?

 2, Would an attempt to control on cyber community to expel fake information not discourage people from stating their opinions or sharing their information?