ABSTRACT
As media giants test the waters of new media, the key thing to watch is their intent. Ordinary people and companies have extremely limited access to it. Public-access cable TV is generally a joke; letters to the editor appear many issues after the offending article. With the astonishingly swift growth of on-line services and Internet connectivity, many new topologies for communication are emerging. In fact, people can build Web sites using the same PCs and Internet connections that they need to do their jobs. Editorial judgment matters, and media conglomerates have hired plenty of it. The communities that are creating and recreating resource lists and discussions about every topic imaginable need help sorting what matters from what doesn’t and presenting it all in compelling, accessible ways. Publishers and telecommunications companies may well merge, but what they do with their merged talents will be very different from the dystopian, one-way, video-on-demand future that seems to have motivated mergers before.
