When considering the power implicated in the modern Internet, one can hardley help but be awed.
Throughout history, there have been times of fast change, generally precipitated by a sudden and unobvious insight or discovery by an individual who also had the combination of passion and means to make his discovery meaningful--that is, to make it concrete, to bring it to life, so to speak. Calling what was available before the Internet "communications technology" is a laughable notion. Communications then generally meant important people communicating to everyone else. It was broadcast and one-way. Beyond that, there was the telephone, which was one person to one person.
The advent of the Internet meant that suddenly communication could be two-way among large groups of people--much larger than would be practical in a meeting or other forum that involved physical presence. With the Internet, everybody can "talk" at once, and yet, everybody can hear everybody else--or, at least, anybody else one cares to hear. It means that thousand-way conversations could be carried on at a fast pace over the course of weeks and months. Ideas that might have once taken months to develop within a group can be developed and explored within a few days. And, perhaps most importantly, those non-obvious insights no longer require means on the part of the discoverer to see the light of day--all they require is for the discoverer to state them, and someone else to see it.
One may be tempted to think that with the ubiquity of communications afforded by Inernet technology, there is nothing that we as a human race can't accomplish.
One would be wrong. While the immensity of benefit to mankind provided by our technologies for massive communications is undeniable, the invitation to hubris on that it extends to the human race can be catastrophic on an equal scale. Humans are still fallen creatures, and they are collectively subject to the ravages of sin--the blindness it causes to sound judgement and to our own limitations, and the aweful temptation to pride--just as they are individually.
In the end, we may find that the human race has collectively fulfilled every promise of Our Lord regarding the Anti-christ.
