I have heard tell that the Internet serves no real purpose aside from being a store front. I have also heard that it sells to people who, having no lives, use the Internet as a substitute.

I watched a world change with the fall of Soviet communism. Communism died of lack of motivation in the Soviet Union, lack of motivation for those actually doing the work; it stayed dead because of the Internet. The attempted coup on the part of the remnants of the communist party failed because there was no means to convince the public they were trying to reestablish control over, that they were actually back in control.

They tried, they told a country that because they had folks bullied in Moscow that the country was thiers again. Because of the Internet, the fact that they were nothing more than an angry bunch of poor losers making a nusiance of themselves in Moscow was information available to an entire nation, and the world.
Proof is in the convincing, and they failed to convince. Its difficult to keep people in the dark in a room with the lights on, unless they like it better in the dark. So perhaps darkness is a light substitute.