Other Web activities have redefined the notion that television is an intimate medium. As television and the computer converge, Omega Replica(http://www.watcopy.com/B-Omega-30.html) we may increasingly see them as the same medium. In August 1999, it carried a live Webcast of the gastric bypass surgery of popular singer Carrie Wilson. Of course, not everyone welcomes this kind of intimacy. Whereas we might applaud the Webcam that catches the burglar breaking into our apartment, most of us are probably less kindly disposed to one that catches us in a passionate embrace with a best friend's significant other or spies on us as we discreetly relieve ourselves in the bushes. Dave Banisar, of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, notes, "Just because you're walking down a public street doesn't mean that the government or any other person should have the right to follow you around wherever you go and take notes of who you see and what you do." One of the problems occasioned by the proliferation of new producers is an absence of quality control; a corresponding advantage is an explosion of speech and a multiplication of the outlets for creative expression. On the problem side of this equation are Web sites that promote flaky cures for serious illnesses. "There is a contaminated flood of information on the Web of uncertain validity and parentage," says Jerome Kassirer, editor of the New England Journal of Medicine. "People have to be cautious about using any health information they find on the Web." Indeed, "[f]our companies already have been charged with making unsubstantiated claims about products that were supposed to 'cure' or 'effectively treat' serious illnesses such as arthritis, cancer, HIV/AIDS, and liver disease." In response, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has begun Operation Cure all to police health claims on the Internet. With the Department of Health and Human Services, the FTC is conducting a consumer education campaign to help viewers identify reliable health Web sites. The Net can also prove problematic when it is used to disseminate defamatory claims about someone. For example, in August 1999, singer Lauryn Hill received an apology from the controllers of the "bitter waitress" Web site, where it had been alleged that Hill had demanded to be served by a person of a certain race. An outlet for waitpersons that are undertipped, the Web site had spread a false and potentially defamatory claim in part because its organizers had not institutionalized a fact-checking process. Expanded Interactivity Whereas the audience for traditional media was largely the passive recipient of whatever content was available and exercised control by choosing to watch or not, read or not, listen or not, the watchword of the Internet is interactivity. This interactivity is changing the way in which some people make purchases. On an average day in 1999, eBay users bought and sold $6.84 million dollars' worth of goods and services. A study by Giga Information Group projects that "[corporations around the world will save up to $1.25 trillion doing business over the Internet by 2002. These savings range from reducing the number of people needed to process a sales request to making it easier and cheaper to order supplies on line." The Internet economy generated $301 billion in 1998; in the same year, U.S. car manufacturers reached $350 billion. With interactivity comes a dramatic change in the concept of the audience. "This new era," writes Ingrid Volkmer, enables the news junkie-cybernauts of New York, Mexico City, Cape Town, Beijing, Moscow and Berlin Breitling Replica Watches(http://www.watcopy.com/B-Breitling-9.html) not only to watch breaking news on CNN International but also to interact with journalists covering these events (via sites such as Microsoft Network's political e-zine 'Slate') and exchange views with each other. This new communication level not only redefines Marshall McLuhan's vision of a global village by creating worldwide communities, but also creates new uses for the computer terminal, which has been transformed from a data-processing machine to a multi-functional tool for online interactivity.
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