When I'm online, I'm alone in a room, tapping on a keyboard, staring at a cathode-ray tube.

Here are my strong reservations about the wave of computer networks. They isolate us from one another and cheapen the meaning of actual experience. They work against literacy and creativity. They undercut our schools and libraries.

No computer network with pretty graphics can ever replace the salespeople that make our society work.

Data isn't information. ... Information, unlike data, is useful. While there's a gulf between data and information, there's a wide ocean between information and knowledge. What turns the gears in our brains isn't information, but ideas, inventions, and inspiration. Knowledge-not information-implies understanding. And beyond knowledge lies what we should be seeking: wisdom.

Data isn't information, any more than fifty tons of cement is a skyscraper.

There is a difference between having access to information and having the savvy it takes to interpret it.

The virtual community? The word virtual does not mean "virtue." It means "not." When I go to the store and they say: The shirt that you brought in is virtually done. It means it is not done, in the same way that the virtual community is not a community. There is no commitment there. When you log off, you are not a member of it anymore. My flesh and blood community, the sense of knowing my neighbor, knowing the guy across the street, having dinner with the people down the block, getting along with each other and making compromises, that's a genuine community with a commitment.