For many people, constructive value of open electronic communication is in networking; for them, anonymity is not useless but counter-productive. Indeed, even on a service that allows users to remain anonymous, many people make a point of establishing their serious intentions by identifying themselves at outset. But, for social adventures of virtual, anonymity is magical cloak of invisibility that makes anything possible. It's their ticket to live not just one life, but a hundred.

A huge amount of online traffic consists of anonymous, idle socializing - much of it in little more than monosyllabic grunts - and cruising in search of dates. In their primordial social ooze a woman might wish to travel as a man in order to avoid constantly being hit by 75 percent or so online users who are male. On other hand a lady whom I met online blazely remarks, "Here, no one can drag you into a dark alley". Consequently, woman can move around confidently online than they can in real life.

The same lady whom I met online got injured years ago and uses clutches to get around. She met her friend online. Disabled people - and to lesser degree elderly, who are less likely to be computer-literate and have access to computers - from vigorous online communities use them for companionship and for gathering information that their impaired mobility might put out of reach. They find online conversation is possible with people who are uncomfortable with disabilities or who assume that an old person would have nothing relevant to say. Neither age nor physical impairment is detectable on Internet.

I wonder how long these kindly impulses - outburst of filial communicativeness, dissemination of information to strangers, warm welcomes and help and comfort freely given will survive. Are they only passing effects of infatuations with a new toy? Or do they represent manifestation in huge populations of human impulses hitherto confined to small groups?

And what should we expect explosion of electronic communication to bring in coming years? Fecundation, a new renaissance, exponential growth of understanding, invention and knowledge? Or a spreading morass of mediocrity, acres of idle chatter, oceans of intellectual corn flakes? Should we look forward to extinction of boredom or exhaustion of curiosity?

Take your pick. Electronic communication is latest human invention to have potential of completely remaking our world. But essence of making most of this wonderful opportunity will be to avoid tampering with it. We must accept it as it comes, because it is mirror, and its blemishes are our own. Well-meaning efforts to censor language or control content can act as disastrous to what may be last place where genuine liberty thrives.

You might download your friend's contribution to relationship at breakfast and upload yours - he or she can put their time in when it suits. It works and even better, it's socially acceptable. No wonder it is now common to see e-mail addresses on stationary or given along with a phone number. Well it makes sense because these days it can be difficult to contact people by phone because they are just too busy.

When first telephone connections were offered for sale it was thought it would be no more than another high tech business tool. Its arrival meant that you could be friends, and maintain contacts with people removed from your space.

The Internet enables you to do exactly same with people who are removed from you in context to time and space. One of most favorite phrases among those who work in IT industry is `enabling technology'. A word that's rapidly becoming just as well used is `compelling'. Of course a technology can't be compelling until it's been fully developed and there's no guarantee that an enabling technology will become compelling.

All of sudden people who wouldn't have dreamed of owing a PC are rushing out and buying latest kit complete with gadgets you can possibly imagine. Having discovered wonders of PC communications they're no doubt going to be compelled to find out what else this enabling technology can do for them.

Yep, adding a net address to those other important possessions - your car and your camcorder means you can now sift your whole life through time and space. You can't get much enabled than that, can you?