E-communications provide some hope of keeping at bay all the forces which threaten the existence of diasporas, especially small ones: assimilation (seen in the decline of once-mighty tongues like Yiddish and Latino) and the danger of irrelevance as the world moves on.
This is why Israel leads the world in deeper computing and communications technologies, while the similarly populated San Francisco Bay Area can afford to devote its IQ to more lighthearted endeavors, such as smartphones, social networks and life-enhancing medical technologies.