Since then the world of communications has changed dramatically. Seven years ago there were about 15 sites on the web. Today the number is somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 million and it's growing at an ever-accelerating rate. There are stories about people falling in love on the web. Stories about people finding lost relatives and doing detailed genealogy research to help them find their roots.
People now keep in closer contact with friends and family across the country and around the world.
And we have access to a seemingly endless reservoir of information on every imaginable subject. The complete works of Shakespeare, digital images of the Gutenberg Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls, health and nutrition almost everything is online. It's really amazing. We have instant access to Einstein's theories and the lyrics to nearly every rock and roll song ever written and copyrighted. And all of that isn't to mention the phenomenal growth in e-commerce.