The commentary at cyberspace events often comes from a surprisingly wide area of the political and social spectrum, especially considering that most of the principals dress alike, look alike, and all use the same machinery. Still, the widely various people who speak at events like this have a bedrock of agreement. They will all declare that these are unprecedented and revolutionary times for computer communications, and that the decisions we make right now are going to drastically affect society for dozens, if not hundreds, of years to come.

And there's a lot of home truth in that assessment. We really have been involved in a revolutionary epoch - during the past seven years the status quo has taken a terrible battering, not just in the world of computation, but across the board, economically, politically, socially. There is a level of instability loose at the end of the 20th century that has not been around since at least 1945. Computer communications is one of most powerful, most influential, and least stable areas in the new world disorder.

However, it seems to me that finally, now, in the summer of 1996, we may have attained a comparative breathing-space. The flash-bulb of cyber-novelty has begun to fade from the retina of the public eye.

The bloom of apparently unlimited possibility has receded a bit. We've begun to get a grip on our dumbfounded wonder. This process may be disillusioning, but one needn't feel cynical about it. It's not a cause for despair. That's the lovely thing about unlimited possibility and its down-and-dirty interaction with the human condition.

There you are, you see - facing the marvelous unknown - all those possibilities. And, being human, you just have to make one little decision. Take one little action - just to show that you can, really. And there's a reaction to that action, and that's gratifying, so you take another step. Then another, and