Who is my neighbour? That question lies at the heart of relationships in cyberspace. Traditionally the answer would have been those living immediately around us. They would probably have been similar in some respect - religion, politics or social status - with some of the same concerns - safety against invasion, sufficiency of resources, etc. Unlike friends, we don't choose neighbours - they come with the home, so to speak, rather than the furnishings, which can be changed. In this respect there are many localities in cyberspace where people choose to 'live' (for example in Internet Relay Chat) where their neighbours are not chosen, and who have different ways of behaving and wanting to behave.
The question of 'who' underlies another question: what duties or responsibilities, if any, do you have to a neighbour? The 'who' was the question asked of Jesus when he had said you should 'love your neighbour as yourself'. Jesus extended the localized meaning to include any that we meet in the course of living. Nobody is outside the potential of being a neighbour, although it may never move beyond potential! Jesus' illustrations cover many different angles: the person who needs help, the person who inconveniently needs something from us, the person who helps us. In all these situations our responsibility seems to be to respond as we would have liked someone to do for us (and more).
Some growth of the Internet has been due to people responding to
others in such a need - desperate cries for help based around a child's illness
or behaviour, or around work needs, as well as much more prosaic cries for help.
The willingness of people to respond is awe-inspiring.
Email and other Internet-based communications are perceived as non-threatening. It is easy to reply, it takes little effort, you are free to ignore messages or responses, and you are not necessarily 'involved' - your response can be limited. You can be a bystander - but no one knows it. In a sense the idea of a bystander is abolished, since no one else can see you not responding; nobody knows you don't want to be involved. In this sense, cyberspace is entirely different from physical presence, when a relationship is admitted, whether a cry for help is heeded or not.
Moreover, another reason for so much help being given is that the scale means that if one in a thousand respond, then that can still add up to a lot of people; many more than is possible in everyday meetings. The potential neighbours are much more numerous and of those a few are willing to help. Again it is instructive to compare the feelings of freedom in cyberspace with those of everyday life. In cities, we meet so many, and so many needs are apparent; 'What change can one person make?' we ask ourselves. The neighbours, to put it bluntly, are too numerous, and we cannot walk away so easily, but nor do we know whose needs are genuine, whom to trust, or how to meet the needs of those we can trust.