We will make the case here that the ongoing digital revolution in present-day media technology represents an important new beginning in public life and is likely to have a fundamental influence on how individuals, social groups, and societies define themselves, how individuals come to know the world around them, and whether further generations succeed in sustaining an energetic public sphere and open marketplace of ideas. His name is the linguistic root for the month we call January. Our muse for this volume might well be the two-faced god Janus of the Roman pantheon who famously looked both forward and backward, the patron of beginnings, transitions, and new plantings.
