There's hope, LH. The internet is beginning to perform the service that a free and independent media is supposed to perform - the service that the mainstream media in our countries is supposed to perform, but doesn't. That's why I don't think threads like this one (in thousands upon thousands of internet fora all over the world) are just wheels spinning, and debate for the sake of debate. I think there's a lot of important information people are putting in them. Information that people couldn't get through the traditional outlets.

I see it as a paradigm shift, away from the kind of parent/child sort of relationship people have traditionally had with their governments and their news media, to a more egalitarian situation in which individuals become more responsible for knowing what they need to know on their own, and becoming more confident about forming their own opinions instead of having their opinions shaped by others.

Have you ever read anything about the Noosphere, LH?