Self as source: Agency and customization in interactive media

In a world of iPod and myyahoo, it appears as though communication technologies exist primarily to celebrate the individual rather than to bridge geographical distances or overcome physical barriers. What do new and emergent media technologies really add to the world of human communication? Are they simply meeting human need for information, entertainment, and social contact in a mediated setting or are they extending, as McLuhan (1964) claimed, our communicative abilities in space and time? In the brief history of computers and the internet, technology has advanced so rapidly that they have called into question fundamental assumptions about the nature of both interpersonal and mass communication.