Like the sexually awakening youngster, we are becoming aware just how intimately linked we all are and must continue to be, whether we feel comfortable about it or not. Our mediating technologies provide the most blatant example of how we are being hardwired together, and it isn't always pretty. Telephones, faxes, computer networks, cable television, satellite links, and cellular services bring a screenager in contact with more people each day than his grandfather could have hoped to meet in his lifetime. This is all pretty non-threatening when it occurs in the context of education, business teleconferencing, and Star Trek conferences, but what about obscene phone calls, junk fax, information overload, loss of privacy, malicious hackers, computer viruses, corporate espionage, or, worse, virtual communities where new ideas are bandied about without authorities to regulate them? Kids
