ABSTRACT
As is often repeated, the internet represents the most seismic shift to the media environment since the advent of the printing press. However, this potential, as well as the role of the internet in the daily life of Americans, is perpetually in flux. In order to understand the role of the internet in the American psyche, we must return to the early days of consumer market access and dialup internet service providers (ISPs), which offered non-military and non-academic users limited access to the internet, using an interconnected virtual space that was mediated and moderated by the ISP. Chapter 9 describes how platforms like Compuserve, Prodigy, and America Online (AOL) defined the popular understanding of the internet at the end of the 20th century by creating a user-friendly conduit for this new and unprecedented resource, thus driving the purchasing of computers nationwide so that users could be connected instantaneously to information, content, communities, goods, and services. From this perspective, it is easy to see how we have come to rely on the internet and the technologies that make the internet available because they provide a tailored version of the world that gratifies our desires.
