The Internet was probably the single most important influence on American culture in the final few years of the twentieth century. Not only did e-mail (see entry under 1990s—The Way We Lived in volume 5) revolutionize the way people communicated with one another, but the World Wide Web brought information, entertainment, new ways of shopping, and access to government into American homes. By 2001, the Internet had been available to a mass audience for less than a decade. In that short amount of time, it had sparked debates about censorship, challenged legal systems around the world, and altered the way stock markets operate. It added new words to the English language, including "web site," "download," and "Internet." It has also revolutionized advertising (see entry under 1920s—Commerce in volume 1), triggered a growth in new journals and magazines unseen since the seventeenth century, and caused turmoil in the global economy...