But so, too, is it easier to see the blood and pain during a woman's labour than it is to imagine the beautiful baby that's about to come out, or to widen one's scope enough to see the whole process as natural, even divine. And I suspect that now this shouldn't even be the task. The birthing is over. Our job is no longer to envision an electronic future that provides equal opportunity for all. The electronic future is now an elec-tronic present.
Online activities are almost ubiquitous.
They are not unique to the online world. Confronted by my own growing cynicism and hand-wringing, I considered stepping back from this column altogether. The world hardly needs another cynical hack. But I think it will be a valuable experiment to see how to move on from here. It's not cyberia that has been grounded by the realities of business and government.