"The message of any medium or technology is the change of scale or pace or pattern that it introduces."
-- Marshall McLuhan

Idealistic cyberpunks and insincere corporate ads can wax eloquent all they like about the utopian aspects of the Internet. They promise a world free from prejudice, where fascists fear to roam, and democratic discourse thrives.

However, while I believe this all may be possible someday, we are far from it now and moving in a vastly different direction. Instead of connecting diverse people and giving birth to a revival in meaningful dialogue about the important issues of our time, the World Wide Web, the most visible face of the Internet, has grown into a culture of anonymous voyeurism. And while the Internet might have built the car, we're the ones behind the wheel steering this path. For example:

• While most companies are still struggling to squeeze a profit out of the Internet, those selling pornography are struggling less than most. And with the Internet, we are no longer simply in the realm of still images; we now have sites like JenniCam, in which people pay money to access the live digital camera in this college student's bedroom. While Playboy's profits increase, Jenni pays her way through college.

• The practice of "lurking" is considered normal in on-line discussion spaces, in which people observe conversations without contributing, and without the conversants even knowing that they are being observed. Where else can you enter a circle of people, listen to a conversation without introducing yourself, then leave without ever being acknowledged or uttering a word?

• We go to a Web site, anonymously take the information we came for and leave; if access requires our name or any other identifying information we often refuse, annoyed, and search for the information elsewhere, where we can preserve our anonymity. We take and take from the Web and return but little, if anything, and usually only through building and offering up our own personal sites, where others can now treat us just as remotely as we treated them.

Of course the Web often rises above this, but not often enough. How has the Web, which was created for academics to collaborate on projects, become so perverted from its original purposes? Or, more importantly, why have we decided to use it this way? Perhaps it is due to characteristics of the Internet that are often in conflict.