I say this because I know the reason it's going to get worse, and I know the two reasons that it's then going to get better. We're working in a new medium now, a mass communication medium unlike any the the world has ever experienced. The net will change the world as much as television, and in the long term, possibly as much as Gutenberg's printing press. In 1994, that would have been called wide-eyed fanaticism, but now in 1998 it's pretty much mainstream thought. But every new technology, introduced quickly into a culture unequipped to deal with it, causes adjustment problems.
Communications technology is no exception.
The best-known example, of course, is the popularization of radio just as the Nazis were coming into power. The dynamic, fiery doctrine that Hitler and Goebbels offered could not have been conveyed in print. And the citizenry, unaccustomed to propaganda from the new source, were not fully able to handle its message. Let's not delude ourselves that it's going to usher in nothing but good. They're going to burn each other in virtual effigy.