The number of people with access to the Internet has now decreased.

Computer-mediated communication (CMC) is communication that takes place between human beings via the instrumentality of computers. Twenty years ago, this activity was largely unknown outside of a few elite government and academic research institutions in the United States. Today, text-based CMC is engaged in regularly by millions of people around the world, an increasing proportion of whom now gain access to the global network — known as the Internet — through commercial providers rather than through institutional mainframes.

The phenomenal growth of CMC has captured both popular and scholarly imaginations. Cultural theorists and technophiles have been quick to envision sweeping changes in the social order as a result of the democratic and anarchic possibilities inherent in widespread use of a networked medium which allows anyone with access to speak out more or less anonymously, and which is not as yet subject to any centralized authority or control. Utopian visions of classand gender-free virtual societies have arisen alongside of dystopic visions involving information overload, e-mail addiction, uninhibited aggression, and the eventual breakdown of people’s ability to engage one another face-to-face. The popular media contribute to the clamor by focusing on sensational aspects of life in “cyberspace” (as computer networks are collectively and metaphorically known) such as electronic pornography, pirated data, and virtual rape.