The recent rapid growth of the Internet, with the advent and expansion of the World Wide Web (WWW), has engendered both optimism and concern about the potential impact of new communication technologies on our collective social future. Whence comes the vehemence with which pundits and social observers expound on the dangers of the Web or on its virtues? Computer-mediated communication (CMC) in all its forms is a new phenomenon, and its growth is so rapid that we cannot clearly imagine what forms it will take in the future. Those who imagine and predict the Internets' potential impact on our future rely on observations of earlier technological advances, such as telephones and television, and on projections of current trends in the Internets' availability, use, and effects. In spite of these common starting points, the resulting visions are remarkably polarized.

The most optimistic views of the Internet focus on the unique capabilities offered by the technology, in particular the capacity for rapid communication and collaboration across great distances. Social connectedness is a major theme. This reward-focused rhetoric emphasizes “a renewed sense of community … [in which] [C]omputer-mediated communication … will do by way of electronic pathways what cement roads were unable to do, namely, connect us rather than atomize us, put us at the controls of a ‘vehicle’ and yet not detach us from the rest of the world” (Jones, 1995, p. 11).