We've gotten cozy with the Web, clicking through sites as easily as we do TV channels with the remote control. Now, quit lollygagging and get to work! A new Web is emerging, and it depends on our sweat to succeed. Hundreds of new sites are trying to draw us out of our chairs and deeper into the cybersphere. This is the new participatory Web: blogs, wikis, podcasts, social networks, forums. While connecting has always been central to the Internet, we were too distracted by those bargains on eBay, Amazon, and Expedia to notice. But in the past few years, behind-the-scenes upgrades have made it easier for ordinary people to take control of the Web, to broadcast their perspectives, whether that happens in a video clip of a guy demonstrating the "Evolution of Dance" or a downloadable recording of weekly Bible verses in Klingon.

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