I wasn’t the only writer with a few feelings on the subject of Executive listening skills in this networked era. A _New York Times_ columnist later told how cavalier the White House crowd had been toward the e-mail from her. I’d actually gotten farther than she had. At least Gore had sent me a higher class of boilerplate. Perhaps that was because I had actually used conventional rather than electronic mail, and had enclosed a photocopy of a TeleRead article from the _Washington Post_. Article or not, however, the White House had thumbed its nose at me. While Clinton and Gore couldn’t reply to every citizen, the composition of the citizens’ advisory council had made clear what the NII priorities were, even in the age of Cyber Socks: Big Government serving Big Business. Clinton-Gore had better change if they wanted my vote in ’96. Rather than just sharing Sock’s meows and feeling ever so smug about high-tech democracy, they needed to spend time more listening to us nonlobbyists and a little less time keeping Vance Opperman happy. Democracy should not mean just a dialogue between the White House and the usual “stakeholders.” * * * * * As is obvious by now, intrusive government officials love to fixate on net.sex. But something else is happening as shown in the next chapter: net._love_. Let’s hope that Exon and company can tell the difference. CHAPTER SEVEN The Electronic Matchmaker Gregory Smith* had yet to kiss Susan Olson* good night or run his fingers through her hair. But he could do something else with his fingers: type to her. Greg was a library and information-management student in Adelaide in South Australia, she worked for a real estate firm in Kansas City, Missouri, and they were carrying on a romance by way of the Internet. “We write letters constantly,” he said, “and exchange our thoughts on newspaper clippings, music, all manner of things. About the only thing we haven’t exchanged are marriage vows.” The outcome, as I began this chapter, wasn’t clear. If the Smith-Olson affair was like many on the Net, they would pull the plug long before all the typing destroyed their wrists. “For every good story,” Greg said of love on the Internet, “there are at least 100 bad stories—people meeting and realizing there’s a major difference between virtuality and reality.” A few months later, I decided, I would check back in with Greg and Sue and report the results at the end of “The Electronic Matchmaker.”