ABSTRACT
How comforting it would be to see in every technological advance the promise and delivery of social improvement. As scientific and technological achievements have accelerated, and as we have become ever-more accustomed to technical progress providing the means and the challenges for societal development, the notion that new technology might leave us, socially or culturally, no better or even worse, can seem perverse. Communication technologies have provided just such a host of promises and presumptions, and have also been the cause of many such unrealized hopes or realized disappointments.
