Presently the Internet may be just an extension of the traditional media (complete with advertising) but I sometimes think that the Internet has become like a giant world wide library, complete with almost every article available, but to find some facts relating to a particular topic, there can be a lot of sifting or filtering to be done.

Presently there appears to be many authors who post to the internet, who wouldn’t bother having their articles or documents published or printed because of cost factors, or they may post to the Internet first, then their article is published latter in the traditional press. Either way, there certainly are a lot of articles available on the net.

Overall I think this a good thing for people in general as it can help countries become more democratic, with moves being made to produce cheap computers (ie $200) running on open software for use in poorer countries.

But there is concern regards Internet 2, which is likely to become the next phase of the Internet. Internet 2 is a very fast form of the Internet, but how much of it will become government controlled. http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/199706/msg00051.html

Too much government control, and the library can become very small indeed.