Peter E. Pflaum - Golden Globe -

The Synergy Network

Wiredbrain home site Pflaump@wiredbrain.com

It works like a giant 800 number for data transmission, with operating costs covered by the government, universities, and a fast-growing number of companies. It has also been almost completely free of constraints on standards or expression.

The content of a bulletin board like "alt.sex.bestiality" would, I believe, make even Howard Stern uncomfortable.

As the network expands, something will have to give: either the government will stop paying, or politicians will notice that the government is paying and will impose controls, like those imposed by school boards on textbook content or by the FCC on radio and TV broadcasts.

The Internet's low-visibility era of subsidized innocence will end, and the network will become as complicated and controversial as everything else. But traveling around it will still be fun, and in the not very distant future the Internet will be as familiar and as much a part of our cultural furniture as television.

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James Fallows is the Washington editor of

The Atlantic Monthly.

Copyright 1994,

The Atlantic Monthly.

Transmitted: 94-06-22 18:51:19 EDT