A kindred, never-ending computing war is bwetween the centralizers (big IBM iron in the old days; sealed PCs on server networks now) vs decentralizers (DOS, Windows before .Net). Rob Kling wrote eloquently about this in the 1970s. I'm on hoiday now and don't have his papers accessible, but the Sociological Rob article that I and Roxanne Hiltz wrote a while back for a joournal contains a summary and references. It's also on my website. Barry _____________________________________________________________________ Barry Wellman Professor of Sociology NetLab Director wellman at chass.utoronto.ca http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman Centre for Urban & Community Studies University of Toronto 455 Spadina Avenue Toronto Canada M5S 2G8 fax:+1-416-978-7162 You're invited to visit -- and contribute to -- my new fun website "Updating Cybertimes: It's Time to Bring Our Culture into Cyberspace" http://chass.utoronto.ca/oldnew/cybertimes.php _____________________________________________________________________