Information Superhighway

Naturally, there are critics who compare it to television and foresee a "vaster wasteland"of 500 channels. The loudest noise, notwithstanding, is that of literally millions of people throughout the globe, some already on the superhighway and some waiting on its on-ramps, who are learning, communicating, doing business, giving and receiving advice, socializing, stealing, praying, and proselytizing to name but a few of its ongoing activities.

A decade ago, the vision of the Net was introduced as "the matrix" in William Gibson's novel Neuromancer. He was the first to use the word cyberspace, and he called it "consensual hallucination, " a place where "all the data in the world is stacked up like on

. . .
itionally, neighborhoods are at risk: "The information superhighway . . . threatens to completely bypass whole communities that cannot afford the service, the hardware, the training, or the time to invest in it. The result will be a kind of electronic redlining, leaving low-income communities and minorities behind" (Soto 7). Although law enforcement agencies are using the Net to help solve crimes- no computer is safe from evil techno-hooligans prowling the Net. The real dilemma is that too much valuable information is being entrusted to systems that simply can't ensure safety. If, by their ill-considered activities, they emphasize this point, so-called cyberpunks may be useful: "Though they make sexy copy, hackers are usually benign- and by flagging some of our vulnerabilities, they can actually help" (Levy 39). The main problem is that real-world laws apply badly, if at all, to cyberspace. Crimes on the Internet have included: phone tampering; computer trespassing; releasing a computer virus; stealing programs; spying on military computers; computer break-ins; stealing military documents; and the unauthorized distribution of software programs. This list, of course, does not mean to imply that other, undetected, crimes have not o
. . .

Some common words found in the essay are:
Canada Despite, Information Age, Wired Nation, Crimes Internet, Wide Web, , Foundation NSF, Holding Net, Prodigy Compuserve, William Gibson's, information superhighway, spring 1995, home shopping, enforcement agencies using, revolution spring 1995, quarterly summer 1994, computer data, on-line services, net users, communications revolution, users require, cable technology, law enforcement agencies, wilson quarterly summer, wilson quarterly,
Approximate Word count = 3740
Approximate Pages = 15 (250 words per page)