America Online's pending $166 billion mega-merger with Time Warner lends credibility and vast importance to the value of the Internet. Indeed, it marks the beginning of what could become a string of mega-marriages between competing Internet giants like Microsoft,Yahoo! and Amazon, with media monsters like General Electric's NBC, Disney's ABC and Viacom's CBS -- not to mention NewsCorp.

But how much independence will such combinations suck out of the Internet's democracy and be replaced with mass entertainment, biased news media, tabloid journalism and hyper-commercialism? Who's going to control the Internet? If the control of television serves as an example, the consuming public's control will certainly be diminished, if not eliminated. That is, except for one thing.

Broadband and the need for communication speed and delivery systems have created wild speculation in the computer technology, cable and telephone industries, not to mention wireless and satellite. The public's airwaves have been used and abused by both political and commercial interests, with little or no consideration for the public interest. But this time, it's interactive. We have tangible choices and we had better make them count.

Clearly, "them" are the monopolies of government and corporations. "Us" are those who have given-in to dependency on government and commercial greed, and those of us who are independents and refuse sacrifice our freedoms. If you have any questions about the threats posed by all this, just think about what the television, entertainment, government and education monopolies have done to degrade and betray our society. They are united by selfish interests. But they can't survive without us. It's time to re-examine ourselves.