Anyone can post messages to the net. Practically everyone does. The resulting cacophony drowns out serious discussion.

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.

Minds think with ideas, not information No amount of data, bandwidth, or processing power can substitute for inspired thought.

Why is it that drug addicts and computer aficionados are both called users?

Anyone can post messages to the net. Practically everyone does. The resulting cacophony drowns out serious discussion.

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.

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