"The vacuum cleaner meant we could give up beating rugs with sticks. Without remote controls, we'd still be trudging across the living room to switch channels on the TV. The Internet made good on Bill Gates' promise to put much of the world's information (and all the world's gossip) at our fingertips.

But has technology really delivered on its promise to save us time and improve our quality of life? The answer is complicated.

"There's no one-size-fits-all answer," says Mary Madden, a senior research specialist with the Pew Internet and American Life Project. "It depends on how you're using technology. Do you manage your technology, or does it manage you? The Internet is inherently full of circuitous paths to information. It can lead to unexpected discovery or distraction."


Many news sites move articles into data bases after a period of time and then offer them for sale, in the process changing the URLs that link to them. Or they require registration. Thus, we provide a link to the front page of the news website and the information necessary to find the story on that site, rather than a direct link to the article.

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