It is also critical to note that communities are no longer restricted by geography. Initially, community was thought of as a place, typically rural. However, the community notion soon overflowed those restrictions and spilled out into a much broader field of meaning. In much the same way that modernity was more than the rate of mechanical and scientific advancement, community became more than a place. It became a common understanding of a shared identity. Railroads, telegraphs, magazines, telephones, and national commerce fractured narrow notions of community and social consciousness (Carey 1989; Durkheim [1915] 1965; McLuhan 1964; Ong 1982). In fact, throughout the twentieth century the notion of community continued to widen (Wilson 1990), due largely to new communication technologies’ ability to unite geographically dispersed individuals with a commonality of purpose and identity.