Larry and sergey = schemantic web
Jon and vint cerf=tcp/ip
Tim and philippkhaune=mosoic!!

Web2.0 ???

> Want to hear a few songs off the new CD I just bought? I’ll make
> MP3s and email them right off.

Ooh, I don't think Charles and Caroline would approve of that, even if the RIAA Marshall was a day's ride away.

> But we become insulated from the rest of society. The surging
> advancement of technology tends to dehumanize culture at the very
> same time it enhances it.

Yep, we're not in Kansas any more.

> Google is a terrific example. Two grad students at Stanford
> cobble some PCs together, and the end result is a business that
> literally has changed the way the world operates. What a stunning
> achievement – one that ranks up with Alexander Graham Bell,
> Thomas Edison, and the like.

Steady on Brinke, the Internet and/or the Web has changed the way the world operates, just like the telephone and electric light (which is what I guess you're getting at, 'true' inventor quibbles aside). I suppose a shaky case might even be made for 'search' itself. But Google? Really?

> There are other landmark companies of the Net Age, to be sure.
> Companies like eBay, Amazon, and Yahoo! have all made enormous
> cultural and technological advances that have shifted the way we
> talk, eat, sleep, and interact.

I'm pretty sure my sleep is unaffected by any of those, and an occasional nudge describes the rest better than a shift.

> Social, political, and
> geographical boundaries have blurred to create a true global
> community, at least from a techno-standpoint.

From a techno-standpoint, about 85% of the global community[1] can't use the Net (i.e they don't have both access and sufficient knowledge to do so), let alone have their sleep shifted by Google.

> China, though, still has issues, as Larry and Sergey have noted.

Or Google now has collaboration 'issues', as some of China's global community have noted. Presumably most of the 90%+ of China's population not yet using the Net don't yet worry much about Google's effect on how their world operates. And let's not forget the dozens of other countries and regimes[2] with similar social and political boundary 'issues' (most of which are apparently not big enough potential markets to trouble Google's ethics ganglion).

> I am definitely a Net fan.

Me too. But you're a little long in the tooth to be a Google fanboy[3], surely? ;)

> But with all the inherent coolness of being able to [...] I still
> think the simple life back on the prairie might be the way to go.
> Talk about peace and quiet. Pa plays the fiddle, Ma does some
> sewing, while Laura and Mary do their homework by candlelight
> with a tablet and pencil, and Carrie does...well, whatever it was
> she did.

Not me, I like it here in the Emerald City[4]. And all of my modern miracles have off/pause/mute buttons ...

[1] http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm
[2] http://hrw.org/doc/?t=internet
[3] http://www.google.com/search?q=define:fanboy
[4] Erm, I may be mixing my folklore here ...

So I read your article and thought to myself, I wonder what Laura Ingalls really looked like. I bet she didn't look like Melissa Gilbert. So I went to google and found a picture...

Sigh. The Web and search engines do not replace libraries. At least not yet. They're a great help to get started, though, and even sufficient for some tasks.