Brief history of communities

The structure of the virtual kingdom involved continents, communities, and cells. you may like to think of it as a tree with a central trunk, major branches the continents, slightly smaller branches coming off of them the communities and then of them the individual branches the cells in our structure.

Communities are the central theme, made up of several cells in contact. Physical space and location are not important although cells that form a community will normally be within one continent.

Like any community, perhaps you should not expect to like and get on with every citizen, although we all have the obligation to act honorably to each other and to all work towards improving the quality of life of every one of our citizens.

Each cell with more that an few citizens has at least two knights. Communities and above create other grades of membership based on what you and others are doing to support and help other citizens. Many communities have their own member only web sites, and they have methods set up so every citizen gets information when necessary.

Communities are generally self running within the principles of New Atlantis. But any cell can split off and form a new community as can any member leave a cell to form a new cell. Communities therefore only grow strong by thinking of all their citizens. We have no optimum size. Its up to the citizens to decide, but as a guide we would suggest that if the leader of the community cannot get to know every member of the community it is too large, and should consider splitting.

As a citizen of New Atlantis, as a single person in a one person cell or as one member in a large community you will see you are always impotent and special to us. Up until the end of 1999 when we encountered problems from the authorities, the president know of every citizen, even if he had never met them, and every member of every club and every citizen had the presidents own private telephone numbers are were encouraged to contact him when they wanted too. As it now turns out for some years the police had been decoding calls in and out of his home to track who he was talking to, as well as monitoring cars seen near his home and more, although this seams to have largely been to aid a business competitor of one of our agency businesses. luckily we had other ways for the president to keep in touch with the rest of the organization that was more secure.

Clearly as we grow, it is not going to be possible for every citizen to have personal contact with the president all the time. He has however said that he always hopes to be able to meet and discuss anything with any citizen, subject to security considerations. You can email him  at (email and contact details now on our min website at www.new-atlantis.org )  and  at the point of writing this he has been able to answerer every email personally. Beware however that the internet like the telephone system is susceptible to corrupt officials gaining access to information.

Concluding on communities from a historic perspective.

A community is a self governing unit, with its own officials. It is made up of a number of cells, each cell comprising a number of citizens. Any cell can form a new community, and any citizen can form a new cell.

Communities today

Communities, particularly the large number of new ones are independent, have their own officers, and live by our objectives, as part of the overall without being in touch with other parts of the organization. As new cells split, corm communities and grow, they too split and spread further. As some point we will decide it is safe for them to all become visible again.