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.

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

Electronic communication is an instantaneous and illusory contact that creates a sense of intimacy without the emotional investment that leads to close friendships.

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

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.

We'll soon buy books and newspapers straight over the Internet. Uh, sure.

The information highway is being sold to us as delivering information, but what it's really delivering is data... Unlike data, information has utility, timeliness, accuracy, a pedigree... Editors serve as barometers of quality, and most of an editor's time is spent saying no.