The invention of the automobile by Henry Ford in 1903 started a domino effect on society that would change the face of modern civilization as we know it. Within 50 years of its creation, cars were changing from an item of luxury to an item of necessity, and the vast majority of Americans owned one. People were able to travel greater distances in a shorter amount of time thus facilitating travel and communication greatly. Since then, the next technological explosion came from the computer industry. Computer technology is the fastest advancing field of science in the United States. To put things into perspective Bill Gates, CEO of Microsoft, stated, “If the automobile industry was to expand as quickly as the Computer Industry, we would be able to drive to the moon and back ten times on one gallon of gasoline.” Since the arrival of the Personal Computer (PC), communication has not only been made fast, its been made instantaneious. Information can now travel from New York to China in fractions of a second. When comparing the statistics of the automobile industry to that of the computer industry, many interesting questions arise. How will computers change the way our society communicates over the next 50 years? 100 years?In 1995, 22 million people in the US and Canada populated the internet, while in 1999, 92.2 million were recorded. In increase of 418% over the course of four years is a remarkable statistic. According to The Computer Industry Almanac, by the year 2002 there will be 165 million online users. With the ever growing popularity of the internet and other online services like Electronic Mail, Chat, Shopping, Gaming, Gambling and Auctions, one has to wonder ‘What CANT I do online?’While still far from replacing face to face communication, the internet has created a ‘Real Virtuality’ where a connection changes the entire world to a digital form and is sent right to your monitor. When one can exp...
