Areader might think that however relevant this book would have been twenty years ago, the Internet and the new digital technologies, hardly mentioned here, change everything. They create an abundance that eliminates any need for government interventions.

This reader would surely be right that much will change but is equally and more emphatically wrong that these changes undermine any of the critical claims or policy recommendations made in this book. Without pretending to survey the legal and policy issues raised by the new communications technologies, which would require at least another book, I want to explain why whatever changes the new technologies will bring, and I can only inadequately speculate about their substance, the changes will not eliminate the problems with the market and the need to think about our democratic commitments.

Like a printing press or plow, a typewriter or table, a telephone or airplane, the Internet and related digital computer technologies are tools. Tools can make doing some things easier, so much easier that people will now do new things. But the Internet is not ideas, not knowledge; it is not passion or values; nor is it wisdom or meaning. It may increase the creation, occurrence, or distribution of these things that it is not. But that depends on its use.

At least to my relatively naive eyes, this tool does three things particularly relevant to the media concerns of this book. Computer technologies and the Internet make the assembly, storing, searching, and copying of data that exists in digital form easier and cheaper by such a magnitude that whole new realms of information use become possible.