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Lost in the digital cosmos: Trying to ask the right questions

Writer Jon Katz recently said that news coverage of the Internet lurches “from one extreme to the other.” Either the Net is “a dread menace or it’s a Utopian vision.” Journalism, he concluded, “has been asleep at the switches,” because the Net is “not simply a story about technology, but it’s a revolutionary change in the society and culture.” As a result, journalism “is in the sad position of having to play catch-up, if it can.”

Cosmic shifts

If you were around any of the years in this chronology you probably didn’t notice—I didn’t—the instant effect of the following:

1944—first automatic, general purpose digital computer;

1951—first commercial use of computer, Univac;

1954—first practical silicon transistors;

1959—Texas Instruments invents Microchip;

1964—IBM sets up the first big operating system, OS/360;

1969—first commercial on-line service, Compuserve;

1969—beginnings of the Internet, ARPA-NET;

1975—Microsoft founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen;