IV. CONCLUSION

Despite the problems, for people of the World, the Net provides a powerful way of peaceful assembly. Peaceful Assembly allows for people to take control over their lives, rather than control being in the hands of others. This power has to be honored and protected. Any medium or tool that helps people to hold or gain power is something that is special and has to be protected. (See "The Computer as Democratizer)

J.C.R. Licklider argued that access to the then growing information network should be made ubiquitous. (Licklider B, 57) His argued that the Net's value would depend on high connectivity. In his earlier article, Licklider argues that the impact upon society depends on how available the network is to the society as a while. He wrote:

" For the society, the impact will be good or bad depending mainly on the question: Will `to be on line' be a privilege or a right? If only a favored segment of the population gets a chance to enjoy the advantage of `intelligence amplification,' the network may exaggerate the discontinuity in the spectrum of intellectual opportunity." (40)

The Net has made a valuable impact to human society. As my research has demonstrated, people's lives have been substantial improved via their connection to the Net. This sets the basis for providing access to all in society. Society will improve if net access is made available to people on a whole. Only if access is universal will the Net itself advance. The ubiquitous connection is necessary for the Net to encompass all possible resources. One Net visionary responded to my research by calling for universal access. Steve Welch smw@sage.cgd.ucar.edu writes:

" If we can get to the point where anyone who gets out of high school alive has used computers to communicate on the Net or a reasonable facsimile or successor to it, then we as a society will benefit in ways not currently understandable. When access to information is a ubiquitous as access to the phone system, all hell will break loose. Bet on it."

Steve is right, "all hell will break loose" in the most positive of ways imaginable. Thomas Paine, Jean Jacques Rousseau, those responsible for the Bill of Rights and French Declaration of the Rights of Man, and the all fighters for democracy would have been proud.

As Licklider predicted, the Net is fundamentally changing the way people live and work. Summing up the important potential of the Net, Paul Ready observed:

" News and transfer of data are revolutionary in their speed and the way they are done. It is likely to change the way things are produced in the future just as other advances in communications in the past did: roads, printing presses, relayed "pony express" mail, railroad, cars, airplanes, tv/radio, and the telephone have all dramatically changed the way things were done, and computers already are too."