Only years later did we understand the trade-offs this involved: the creation of excessive bureaucracies(官僚機構(gòu)),the difficulty of forging personal connections between teachers and students.

With computers and Internet connections in so many households, colleges, business, people e-mailing friends and relatives all the time—or talking to them in writing in online chat rooms.

In an earlier generation, we lost our connection to the land, and now we are losing our connection to the machinery we depend on," says Michael Hout, a sociologist at the University of California, Berkeley.

Corporations in Germany realized that there was an interest to be served economically and patriotically in building up a skilled labor force at home; we never had that ethos (風(fēng)氣)," says Richard Sennett, a New York University sociologist who has written about the connection of craft and culture.

Many cell phones allow users to surf the Web, but only some newer ones are capable of wireless connection to the local area computer network