Vic SussPaul W:Garv~AThe Reference ShelfV. POLITICAL AND POLICYMAKING ASPECTSr's IntroductionH. Care. The N)licvmaking andFrank M. Tuerkheimer. The Underpinnings of Privacy Protection Communications of the ACM 164Roger S. Conrad. Winning Votes on the Information Super-highway Campaigns & Elections 173lames H. Snider. Democracy On-Line The Futurist 185V. CULTURAL AND SOCIAL ASPECTSEditor's hTom Mad( SuperlGeorge GBronwvntroduction[ox~ The Cultural Consequences (fighwayilder. Breaking the BoxFrver. Sex & the Superhighwa~lohn Zipperer. The Naked CityBOOKS AND PAMPI-ADDITIONAL PERK,ETS~ICAL ARTICLES ~Athe InformationWilson Quarterl)National Revieu~ Working WomanChristianit~ Today1941942O2210218227228PREFACEat haste to construct a magneuc tc~cgMaine and Texas, it may be, have not The Information Revolution has arrived. Cable television, CD-ROM's, interactive videos, laser discs, electronic mail delivery--concepts unknown a decade ago--are not staple items of daily life.Unlike conventional media, modern technology allows for theconversion of messages into electronic "bytes" of information--the language of computers. This breakthrough has been com-pared to another technological revolution of more than 500 yearsago" the invention of movable type. Although Vice President Gore is often credited with coiningthe term "information highway," the phrase was first used byauthor Ralph Lee Smith. In his 1972 book, The Wired Nation, hedescribed the federal subsidies for interstate highways and sug- gested a "similar national commitment for an electronic highway system to facilitate the exchange of information and ideas." The result of such a commitment was the much-heralded In- ternet. Its predecessor was initiated in August 1968 when the U.S. Department of Defense required a network to connect its widely dispersed computers~ A quarter of a century later the l~ternet has become a web of more than 40,000 networks linking an estimated 30 million users in more than 100 countries. ' While, the highway metaphor illuminates the strengths of an interconnected society, it also suggests possible problems. Writing in the computer journal Communications of the ACM Peter G. Neu- mann notes some of them: traffic jams, road kill, drunken driv- el's, and car jackers, as well as drag races, joy riders, toll bridges and crashes. Furthermore, a 1995 Newsweek poll showed that 23% of the respondents believed that computers would help stratify ~~iety into those who could afford developing technologies and those of lesser means. Nonetheless, most Americans feel that computers serve im-!i ipoRant functions in their lives. In the same poll, 73% of workers