It's a highway that promises amazing opportunities in education and, in
one sense, the ultimate in freedom. To sit alone in a room with a machine
that offers instant access to the whole of the world's information is
surely to experience a new dimension in freedom.
For some, however, it may also bring a new dimension in alienation. If
a little learning is a dangerous thing, a bottomless well of information
may prove just as dangerous. The solitary mind could drown in it. The
global village, it turns out, is a lonely place. Though the mass media
have hugely increased the flow of information, many over-informed city
people feel a cultural emptiness, a spiritual vacuum, a sense of being
strangers in their own place. Will the electronic highway give such
people a sense of community, or will it simply turn them into tuned-in,
hooked-up hermits?