I'm sure you're thesis will be interesting, but I for one am just
plain sick of hearing about how the Net is the end-all be-all.
Sick of hearing about virtual communities and distributed thinking
and electronic democracy and how peachy it will all be. Oh, and
there is a difference between being "addicted" to usenet news (or
web surfing) and being addicted to crack. You wouldn't know that
if you watched far right religious TV shows, however. Maybe you
belong to the Naked Computer Club (people who feel naked without
their computers or electronic gadgets) but a so-called "net addiction"
certainly couldn't require the Betty Ford clinic, and it wouldn't
drive you to beat your kids or murder your spouse. I'll tell you what's
frightening: homelessness, hunger, illiteracy. If the Net allows us to
more easily ignore those, then *that* is the danger, not the IRC-shakes.
-Russell
=(Russell Holt)====-===-==-=-=--=---=---- --- -- - - - - -
holtrf@destinyusa.com http://www.destinyusa.com/russ/
Destiny Software Corporation http://www.destinyusa.com/