It makes it more aware of itself as a global environment. The first Earth Day was in 1970. This is not an accident. The ecology movement really took off once we had those photographs from space. You've written that networked personal computers are making everyone an author and perhaps extending the freedom of the press to an unprecedented degree.
Online information is both worse and better than edited information.
Some of it is worse, and that puts you in the mode of actively figuring out what information is good and what information is not so good for your purposes. But that's better than taking it as it's provided in both respects. Well, it goes two ways. One trend is toward printing things like newspapers, magazines and books much closer to the customer, either in the home or the local copy shop. So far, paper is still a better display and storage medium than computers for most people.