"Watering-down Theory"

This is a popular thing that you hear around the net,

at least before about a year ago. Lines like "AOLer's

suck" and other general statements of this nature let

us in on a big secret -- Much of the Internet was

elitist. Think about it; most of the people on the

Internet in 1989 were .edu, .mil, and .gov. Nowadays,

the world is full of .com's and .net's. The empire

player of the early nineties, an individual either

doing research science, computer science, or some

other discipline that involved workstation-intensive

computing, has given way to the WebTV box, and the

casual browser.

This is not a bad thing. The Internet provides and

should provide everyone with the same opportunities

and experiences. It may be possible to one day come

to understand each other in ways that, for whatever

biased reasons, would not be possible with face to

face communication.

On the other hand, it is important to understand

that even though there are a lot more people on the

'net, that doesn't necessarily mean that there are

more people fitting the empire-player profile.