by Robert Marshall

About the author: Robert Marshall is a member of the Virginia House of Delegates.

A classroom or library with a computer and a modem hookup to the Internet is simply the latest in a long line of tools that aid information presentation and retrieval. In its functions, an Internet-linked computer is a combination of the following: a television, a radio, an electric typewriter, an electronic stenographer, an electronic Polaroid camera, a message service, a teletype, an electronic community bulletin board, an amateur or "ham" two-way radio, and a television station for camera-equipped computers or a local access long-distance phone (with echoes) for phone-equipped computers.

This combination of equipment doesn't produce magic boxes that mutate nature, amend the U.S. Constitution, or alter any of the Ten Commandments. Yet, when otherwise intelligent people...