The fact that the rise of modern marketing, consumer culture, and the mass media follows near identical developmental trajectories is important here. A century ago, the rise of modern communications made modern marketing possible. Newspapers and magazines, then radio and television, enabled marketers to project brands into national consciousness. In large degree, brands transcend geography because media transcend geography. In fact, most of the rethinking of community has had to do with the rise of mass media. Mass media demonstrated that virtually all of the hallmarks of geographic community could be simulated, if not wholly or substantially replicated, in a mass‐mediated world. The changes in computer‐mediated communication currently under way are no different in this regard (Fischer, Bristor, and Gainer 1996; Jones 1995; Rheingold 1993).