Finally, I want to thank the many people who gave their time by way of e-mail or otherwise. Lest I forget some important ones here, I won’t list any names. But by way of the references in the book itself, readers will learn the identities of many. CHAPTER ONE The Terrain A color photo lights up my computer screen when I hit the return key, and, in big, bold Times Roman letters, I see the latest from the Internet: _Playboy Is Traveling the Info Highway Looking for Women for a Special “Girls of the Net” Pictorial_ Sitting atop a pile of books, a most ungeekish model looks flawlessly nubile, as if part of a virtual reality tableau conjured up for Hugh Hefner himself. _Playboy’s_ message is clear: What counts isn’t mastery of Telnet, Gopher, Lynx, or other Net voodoo. Candidates should mail or e-mail “a recent full-length body photo in a two-piece bathing suit or less and a clear face shot.” The same day a famous hacker named Cliff Stoll goes on a Washington radio station to promote his book _Silicon Snake Oil_, which says the Internet steals too much time from true learning and life. For better or worse—mostly better in my opinion, egalitarian that I am—the Internet has Arrived. A quarter-century ago scientists dreamed up a predecessor of the network to let computers jabber to each other across the United States, even after a nuclear attack. Fearless professors followed with electronic talk on topics ranging from biology to poetry. Now it’s as if _everyone_ is on the Internet—not just _Playboy_ but _Penthouse_, some Arizona lawyers who love to inflict junk ads on the innocent, a Florida manicurist, Democratic and Republican stalwarts, thousands of college freshmen, punk teenagers, and elementary schoolers in London, Singapore, Minnesota, Nova Scotia—you name it. In one way or other, the Net ties in to smaller networks ranging from local, bulletin board-style systems to America Online, CompuServe, Prodigy, Delphi, GEnie, Bitnet, Bix, eWorld, and MCI Mail. Fans of David Letterman and Jay Leno, the world’s most famous talk-show rivals, are even duking it out online. The cyberspace section of _Newsweek_ regularly lists the hottest attractions of the Internet—for example, the best sites on the World Wide Web, the multimedia area where you can see pictures and hear sound.