MarkoH01: I am no newcomer but I remember coming into this forum and mentioning a game which was then gifted to me. I did not understand why anybody should give me something without payment or sth. to trade for it. After I started giving myself I finally understood. This is the one place where you can do something good to people even if you don't have that much. I love it. And even if it is none of the questions you asked I'd like to add that this few days I experienced the friendly people here in the forum were one of the finest. Strange people from different countries and everybody wants to hel another stranger. Unfortunately rel life is different but here wen can live it and I am glad that I experienced it.
Well spoken. As I see it, this place
IS a part of "real life". Sure, not every place is like this, and this is what makes is special. But I find comfort in the thought that literally all over the world there are nice, helpful and generous people, with no regard to language, race, sex or religion. We may be scattered out on the physical place called Earth, but we found a place to come together, that is just as real - even if it is created by means of technology.
And if you listen to the inventors, founders, developers of the internet technologies, in many of their speeches and treatises I think I hear that this is what they had in mind. Exchange of thought and ideas, not commerce and $$$, and not even military power (that funded the early net).