by Dinesh D’Souza

About the author: Dinesh D’Souza is a research scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and the author of The Virtue of Prosperity: Finding Values in an Age of Techno-Affluence.

There has been an undeniable erosion of community attachments in the United States in the past few decades. Champions of technology—a group I call the techno-utopians—believe the Internet can reverse that decline through “electronic neighborhoods,” where people form the same kinds of social bonds they once formed in physical neighborhoods.

Can technology help to restore community? I believe it can, but not for the reason given by the techno-utopians.

Cybercommunity is a concept that has caught on in the tech world. Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com, defines a community...