Culturally speaking, (Score 1)

the Internet has done more than anything else recently to bring differing peoples together. You can see this cross-cultural knitting together of people happening. I'd say a good portion of people my age (I'm 21), who were in high school when Hackers hit the TV screen, would agree - a vision of us bright, young upstarts from across the globe destroying legacy everything and talking to each other on cell phones is just too compelling. Dread your hair with beeswax from Canada, pick out a T-shirt from China, pull up a pair of jeans from I-don't-even-know-where, slip into some Payless shoes from Guatamala(?), pick up your tri-band cell phone from Finland, turn on that laptop powered by an American made CPU, and hook it up to a pay phone with an acoustic receiver. Hack the Planet! It's like a siren call for revolution, but for what? Vietnam is over (I think...). Racism and sexism are slowly dying off (maybe not as fast as they should be). Who do we rebel against? I'm still trying to figure that out. But once I do, place me an order for an acoustic receiver. Wait! I've got it! Let's rebel against those PESKY SUV OWNERS! Damn them and their tyranny! Polluting our environment and cutting me off in the morning - LET'S GET 'EM! :-) Seriously, a friend of mine asked me the other day how it was that I was going to help people with computers. She thinks volunteer work is the way. I think computers are the way. So tell me how computers are helping people... If anything, all of us bright computer people are using the Internet to silently, anonymously (sorta) voice our opinions. (Well, duh.) The revolution is in the way we voice our opinions - so if this is a virtual revolution, does this mean it has no basis in reality? Think about it. We can talk all day and accomplish nothing. Sometimes, I think about that and I don't even have the energy to talk.