We're all connected. (Image by Blake Burris.)

I don’t know yet how much of David Gelernter‘s essay on Edge, Time to Start Taking the Internet Seriously, I agree with, but it’s a must-read for anyone who wants to debate the present and future of our lives in the Internet Age. An excerpt:

“The Internet will never create a new economy based on voluntary instead of paid work–but it can help create the best economy in history, where new markets (a free market in education, for example) change the world. Good news!–the Net will destroy the university as we know it (except for a few unusually prestigious or beautiful campuses). The net will never become a mind, but can help us change our ways of thinking and change, for the better, the spirit of the age.

This moment is also dangerous: virtual universities are good but virtual nations, for example, are not. Virtual nations–whose members can live anywhere, united by the Internet–threaten to shatter mankind like glass into razor-sharp fragments that draw blood. We know what virtual nations can be like: Al Qaeda is one of the first.”