the Information SUPER highway

way back in the '90's (1890's), would a Telegraph office manager, say in New York or Washington D.C., been exposed to information from many sources, from which he could deduce, conclude, and then use, to write a column of observations and prognostications of the financial, political, and cultural scenes of the day?

perhaps a Telephone switchboard operator could've done the same, thirty years later?

and thirty years later, after the creation of the National Defense Highway System commonly known as "the Interstates", could not a traveling salesman in the 1960's have conversed with and listened to a few score or few hundred "regular" people in the course of his travels over a few weeks or months, and from those conversations have developed, almost like a poll, a more accurate idea/sense of what to expect, say, in an upcoming election?

in 2008, thanks to the Internet, one can easily "listen to" the conversations and assertions of a hundred or two hundred people, every day. and like the 'salesman', one can 'travel' via the Net, to anywhere on the planet in only a few seconds. range far enough, wide enough, and long enough, and one can deduce trends, waves, and spikes in the opinions and focuses of many particular demographic groups and thus perhaps glean a rough idea of direction of the whole.

don't you know that Tom Paine would love to be alive today?
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