The year 1989 dawned like any other but, in retrospect, it witnessed two major developments of immense historical significance. One was highly visible and widely celebrated: the symbolic dismantling of the Berlin Wall sparking the brushfire of electoral democracy spreading throughout the post-Communist world and beyond. The other was less generally recognized at the time, beyond a few scientific and technical cognoscenti: the invention of the World Wide Web. Dispersed computers communicating via packet-switching networks, and hence a rudimentary version of the Internet, had linked scientific elites for two decades. It took the invention of the Web by Tim Berners-Lee in CERN and the launch of a graphical browser, Mosaic, four years later to popularize this technology. Like a stone dropping into a pellucid pond, the ripples from this invention are surging throughout industrialized societies at the core, as well as flowing more slowly among developing societies at the periphery. With the size of the online community doubling every year, few doubt the potential importance of the Internet for transforming the way people live, work, and play. But, beyond these spheres, what are the causes of stratification in the networked world? In particular – the core focus of this book – will the Internet serve to reinforce or erode the gap between information-rich and poor nations? Will it exacerbate or reduce social divisions within countries? And will it strengthen representative democracy, as many hope, or will it buttress the power of established interests, as others fear?