These are early days in the exploration of how the concept of community –challenging enough in its own right for inquiries in social science, politics, and education – is to be understood in the emerging hybrid worlds in which people live. These worlds are not simply governed through face-to-face communication. Conversations and relationships are, for a growing number of people, mediated through new tools enabled by computing and telecommunications. These are exciting times, akin to the first decades of the written word and the discourse that might have ensued around what it meant to have the new “virtual talk” that texts created. An examination of Socrates' dialogues in Plato's Phaedrus may provide some insight into what such discourse might have been like as Socrates questions the wisdom of writing and books. In these dialogues, Socrates outlines the myth of how the ancient god Theuth gave writing to Thamus, the king of Egypt, and although Theuth advocates that his discovery of writing “provides a recipe for memory and wisdom” that ought to be imparted to other Egyptians, Thamus challenges the gift: