It's always hard to predict the future. As Tenner (1996) notes, at the end of the 19th. century no-one predicted the rise of the motor car, nor its influence on everyday life, even though the Benz's patent had been granted in 1886. We are perhaps just past that stage with the Internet; most people agree that it is about to change our lives significantly, though to what extent and whether for good or bad, opinions differ.

What we can do is look to the past and examine the precedents to this life-changing technology. The most obvious is the telegraph, invented in mid-nineteenth century and not dissimilar in nature to the Internet. Tom Standage's (1998) book, `The Victorian Internet', details the rise and fall of this technology, drawing striking parallels to the Internet of the late twentieth century. It is also possible to compare the impact of the Internet with the influence of such technologies as the printed book (Manguel 1997, 1996), railway and air travel, and other communications technologies.