havingproblems@cm.com: new ways to miss the point

The desire to establish international links between two departments of adult education and to experiment with new technologies led us to establish a listserv—a computer based community in cyberspace. This article describes the experience and attempts to articulate some of the problems that emerged. The main problem was the failure in developing a sense of community among the participants. This failure had its origins in some of the assumptions about groups in cyberspace and their similarity to groups in face to face settings.