ABSTRACT
For many young people today, it’s hard to imagine a time before the Internet, harder still to imagine a time when people relied on typewriters and whiteout. But consider these statistics. As late as 1994, only 11 percent of American households had access to the Internet (NTIA 1995). By 2007, that statistic was well over 60 percent.1 And this was just the figure for household Internet access; well over 70 percent of American households had someone who had access to the Internet at some location. In the span of just one decade, the Internet had entered our homes, our schools, and our workplaces-not to mention our libraries, our cafes, and our cell phones-to become a major feature
of daily life. Given the rapid spread of Internet technology, it’s easy to see why the Internet might be celebrated for bringing about a social transformation in American life.
