Story in the Second life Herald: "It is interesting that during the decades in which the cybersalons have emerged on the scene, the philosopher Jürgen Habermas has written extensively on the concept of the “public sphere” and its demise. For Habermas, the 18th century French coffee houses and salons formed a kind of paradigmatic model of the exchange of ideas in the public sphere, and in his view it was the critical exchange of ideas in these 18th century venues that led to parliamentary democracy and other great social advances that western culture has enjoyed. In Habermas’ view, however, this model of the public sphere has been crippled by the rise of mass media – the problem with mass media being that it turns media into a consumable commodity rather than a forum to critically debate important ideas.

Clearly, Habermas has not been spending a lot of time online. If he had, he might have sounded more optimistic."