By technological standards, the Internet is still "new"; it has been a mere 30 years since it was first introduced in the form of a primitive network of four computers called ARPANET (1969). It wasn't until 1982, with the creation of USENET, that the Internet (still not referred to as such) became even remotely known to the then elite computer-literate public, seven years more before the first commercial dial-up Internet access provider was introduced (1989), and three more before Internet communication was made easily available to private users (1992). Since 1992, with its excruciatingly slow and unreliable 900 baud-rate modems, the Internet has quickly made the inevitable jump from being a luxury item reserved for those who could afford it to finally becoming an affordable necessity to everyday life, all within eight years of becoming publicly available. The benefits of this "new" technology are awe-inspiring in their number, but affect the private user mostly in the way!
             s that it has changed our methods of communication.
             Arguably, Internet communication (including BBS, e-mail, and chat services) has been most beneficial to mankind by making it so much easier to communicate with friends and family. Imagine having to physically phone someone up, or, God forbid, go to his or her house in order to speak with him or her face-to-face about something so mundane as the next week's assignment or the birth of a child. This would require not only considerable strenuous effort in regard to dialing the phone or driving a vehicle, but would also require the uncomfortable and exhausting task of actually speaking. God knows we do enough of that when ordering our daily cup of coffee, espresso, or mocha latte. Now, thanks to the Internet, everyone we know (or at least want to know) is "connected," and, therefore, quite literally at our fingertips. If someone doesn&
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