by James H. Snider

About the author: James H. Snider is a political science fellow at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, and the coauthor of Future Shop: How New Technologies Will Change the Way We Shop and What We Buy.

Over the years environmentalists have cautioned us against threats to the environment—the population explosion, nuclear radiation, pesticides, aerosols, nonrecyclable garbage, and automobile exhaust, to name just a few. But what they haven’t noticed yet is the environmental menace posed by the information superhighway.

If you look at the literature of some of the organizations concerned with preserving the land, such as the Wilderness Society or the Sierra Club, you don’t see the information superhighway listed as a threat. On the contrary, the information superhighway is supposed to help the environment...