You may recall from the introductory lecture that each of the waves that transformed human life had a language aspect (speech, writing, printing, and now the Internet, and its graphical outgrowth, the World Wide Web). The WWW, for the first time in history (here's a shorter history), gives everyone the ability to speak to everyone else, which leads to its greatest strengths and promise, as well as to its biggest drawbacks. Email allows you to keep in contact with lost friends, but you get spammed, and everyone can now demand your time as never before. Videogames achieve amazing realism, and you can play against a dozen people from anywhere in the world, but the games are often violent. If you don't like the real world, you can join and even create your own virtual community (here's how to visit some), but is that liberation and legitimate pioneering, or mere escapism? Clearly there are perils, and not everyone is optimistic about the digital future (dissenters/Neo-Luddites)

A few years ago, Leo LaPorte Jr spoke here about the Wild West phase the WWW was in, and argued that we can make it what we want, or we can let it be taken over for commerical purposes, just as all other media have been.

Because the WWW is owned by the people, at least for now, it's easy to use it as a resource to study popular culture, since any aspect of it is being discussed on personal web pages, in newgroups, and even in chat rooms.

But since our constant question is, What does this phenomena tell us about ourselves, you might want to consider these questions:

Is true community in cyberspace possible? Is this new technology bringing us together, or merely fragmenting and isolating us further? Can we really learn about ourselves by pretending to be someone else in a chatroom or virtual community?

Does everyone have equal access and power in cyberspace? What are the potential political effects? Are hate groups using the WWW effectively for recruiting? Should instructions for making bombs be on the WWW? If we wanted to, could we do anything about it?

As always, ground your discussion in a specific website or experience. Here are some other hints for writing on this topic. Here are some useful links and recommended reading.