The Carolinas rank near the bottom of the country in the number of households with computers and Internet access. In 1998, only 21.4 percent of S.C. homes and 19.9 percent of those in North Carolina were online, says a U.S. Commerce Department study. Those numbers are changing. One Internet research company projects that 63 percent of U.S. households will be online by 2003. But Shapiro says the problem isn't just access.
Information is democracy's great leveler.
And nowhere is information about government, communities and ideas more readily accessible than online. It's having options,'' says Steve Snow of Charlotte, who founded a community network called Charlotte's Web. Adam Searing helps people do that. This year, fighting a bill that would have put a surcharge on prescription drugs, he e-mailed his network of nearly 500. They in turn e-mailed friends and lawmakers.