Personal computers

In the 1990s the personal computer revolution turned into the social computer revolution. The thrill of having sophisticated computer power on your desktop turned out to be just the beginning, once your machine could connect to everyone else's via telephone lines. There is a global computer the size of humanity taking shape. Now that everybody can publish their own interests to a world audience on the Net, we learn irreversibly that the world is far …

…sense. People are not using the net to vote on issues (though they may soon) or to elect representatives in a hierarchical power structure. They are using the Net to make things happen directly, personally, immediately. "Here comes everybody," James Joyce wrote in "Finnegan's Wake" to summarize what the 20th century would bring. Media visionary Marshall McLuhan chanted his statement like a mantra. The Net has made it real. In a cascade, here comes everybody.