I wouldn't want to keep in contact with my international friends any other
way. Granted, when you're sending them a physical item you really need to
use the postal service, but for messages to get there cheaply and swiftly
there's no touching e-mail. I personally can type faster than I can write
by hand and I don't think that that's all that unusual; it's easy to get a
lot said quickly in a few e-mail messages, and for the discussion to take
place in just a couple of days. If you're a hoarder like me then it's easy
to keep all your old correspondence, too, as it takes up just a disk or
two rather than a box of letters. Once you know a few people on e-mail who
you want to keep in (very) regular contact with, you'll see the advantages.
It facilitates Diplomacy games particularly well, and turns lasting days
rather than weeks are easily possible. Which makes for a different game.
	The World Wide Web has had a lot of half-truths talked about it;
here's my take on what I regard as the second main reason to get Internet
access. A lot of information in the form of text, pictures and more and more
video clips and sounds is available if you know where to look. It isn't
wonderfully well organised, though. The only really reliable way to find
any particular WWW resource is a reference given by some other medium; I
don't really rate the search engines available. Even when you know where
to look, although the mechanism of doing what you have to do to get the
information you want is simple, it's not wonderfully robust, as it relies
on computers worldwide working properly. They may not always do so, though,
and so the Web can very frequently get very slow. Furthermore the quality
of the information is not always wonderful. Either it comes from an official
source who have an interest in you taking the trouble to get information
from them, or it comes from an amateur. In the latter case the information
you trawl up is frequently outdated, second-hand or just plain wrong. No
matter how keen you are on any particular subject, you've got to have a
special sort of determination to maintain a reliable information source
available for access by the world, and keep it really fresh. Far too often
someone will start something really exciting and lose patience with the
project... leaving a tantalising "what would have been" behind. Mind you,
when things go right on the Web, they go very right. There are quite a few
situations where the Web is the best source of information on a topic.
	The Web is also a wonderful place to waste time; you can spend a
lot of time exploring a good site on a topic you have no particular
interest in. It's a good way to learn a little about lots of subjects. For
instance, did you know the best roller-coaster in the world is one in
Oakwood, South Wales - a wooden coaster new last year called Megafobia?
Mad Americans travel to Britain just to ride our rides again and again,
and Oakwood is now a major port of call for them. Roller-coasters have a
strong representation on the Internet, and it's a joy to read about them.
Even if you're a wimp like me who has no intention of touching one with a
particularly bargepole-like stick. You can play games to a certain extent
on the World Wide Web; people are spending lots of time and energy on
games where you play against people all around the world where speed and
accuracy are important. Word games and quiz variants have been most
successful thus far, but things change entertainingly quickly.
	Number three and at least penultimate on my list is the fact that
the Internet has facilities for putting people with common interests
together to discuss their common liking. This is particularly good if you
have fairly esoteric interests and it's hard to get in touch with people
to share the fascination with by any other route. Am I referring in part to
my own game show liking? Rumbled already. USENET newsgroups, which work
like worldwide bulletin boards (you post something, and everyone who wants
to can read it) exist and are of various efficiency. Superb for getting fans
together and getting fans discussing their chosen topic. The disadvantage
is that they're very prone to irrelevant and unhelpful contributions; from
abusive messages posted to all and sundry to people trying to sucker you
in to a multi-level marketing scheme where you send them money and get
nothing in return, there's an awful lot of noise among the quality
discussion. That said, any discussion is better than none to someone really
committed to a topic. It's a very good way of getting to know people with
similar interests to you - if you're not in contact with as many people
as you'd like to be already anyway!