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FaceBook, PenPal.net, MySpace, YourSpace. Now we can communicate with potentially anyone, anywhere, with total anonymity. Good or bad? It all depends on your perspective and your motives. And it goes without saying . . . I guess I'd better say it: Everything changes when it comes to minors. As with so many things, kids just can't be allowed to do all of the things that adults can do. We can argue about the cutoff age (when a kid becomes an adult) and how it's different for different kids. But we have to draw some kind of line somewhere, accepting that not everyone will agree. Or we could just ask all the kids what they think they should be allowed to do.

It's clearly a revolution, but is there really any new information? For the traditional media that has adapted to internetization, the newness is in its speed and variety, or splinterization, if you like. (That's two more new " . . . ization" words. Can we go for number four?). The new, new kind of information, meaning messages we've never heard before, come from fringe media sources that, previously, never had much of an outlet. Like it or hate it, the Drudge Report probably could have never gotten off the ground without the internet and the WWW--it probably would never have gotten the necessary funding. But now it doesn't need much funding to get started. And I guess if you can develop a following by word-of-mouth and linking, more power to you (and the people).

The large majority of internet consumers receive most of their information from a very small group of media conglomerates, just like cable TV, radio, and newspapers. For those consumers, the internet is just another channel for the same brand of noise. But for those dogs that are willing to dig a deeper hole, there is a wealth of new--previously inaccessible--information. Granted, there's a lot of tripe out there. But if we use care in judging its quality, there's a sea of good information to be had. For instance, how do you think I researched and launched my new PAC: The Campaign for the Acronymization (number four--YES!) of America, TCFTAOA (pronounced: "TIK - FOOT - AYE-OH-AH")? FYI, TCFTAOA pledges to not make a BFD out of every FUBAR SNAFU that the USA, CIA, FBI, AAA, ASPCA, NATO, NASA, MADD, FADD, PTA, FAA, and FFA gets themselves into. Also, r u my bff on the WWW? CFI care.

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Look how digital media has hurt us. For example, politicians and celebrities have it much tougher. It seems that their every utterance is recorded and digitally archived. So when the president says he never said this or that (but he really did), the professional (or not) media can refute this in hours or minutes by finding, and then broadcasting, his original statement--which he, in fact, did say. And when a poor movie star has one bad day in which he gets drunk, hangs out with some young party girls, drinks some more, drives his Mercedes on a highway he thinks he owns, gets pulled over, verbally abuses a cop he thinks he owns, indicts an entire race for all the problems (real and imagined) of the world (which he thinks he owns), has his slurticious ethnic soliloquy recorded by the nice policeman that pulled him over, has his picture taken by the nice policeman down at the station--next thing he knows, the poor movie star finds his stuporous mug shot and drunken rant all over the internet. You denigrate one race--one measly ethnic group!--and they forget all about those thought-provoking buddy cop movies you made and all that you've done for Beverly Hills.

Of course, digital archiving of information has made all manner of research easier and faster to do. And its availability has expanded to the common woman, in addition to professional researchers. Because of the digitization of information and its wide accessibility, we now have citizen-scientists, citizen-journalists, citizen-gossip columnists, etc. Everything that used to be only available to professionals, or the incredibly resourceful, is now there for anyone with a computer and an internet connection.

But the flip side of this is that everything that used to be only available to professionals, or the incredibly resourceful, is now there for anyone with a computer and an internet connection. We're all aware of how information can be misused. Maybe (What do you mean, maybe?) we shouldn't have access to bomb-making plans, or the ABCs of how to properly commit suicide--and get it right this time. And maybe (WDYMM) we shouldn't be able to harvest personal or damning information about our neighbor. This is another conundrum wrapped in a canolli (Did I already use that one this year?). It's good versus bad. It's yin versus yang. It's Lucy versus Ricky. How can we reconcile these new abilities with their concomitant abuse potential? It's a very tough question.

And no discussion of digital media would be complete without mention of the pen pal/friends networks.

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