In the March First Monday - An interesting transposition has happened. It used to be that the farther things were, the more difficult it was to know them. Today, thanks to communication technologies, we often develop relationships with what is far at the expense of what is immediately around us. This paper explores the increased irrelevancy that the near acquires through our use of online technologies. But by proposing a model of praxis that incorporates our actions online as well as offline, this paper also argues that online technologies can play an important part in bringing the epistemologically far near to us, and making the physically near relevant again.

Re-approaching Nearness: Online communication and its place in Praxis
By Ulises A. Mejias http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue10_3/mejias/