Abstract
The future universal distributed digital library is already foreshadowed by the availability over the World Wide Web of two massive social data sets, the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and the Public Use Microdata Samples of historical censuses. Scholarly publication on the net is illustrated by the Electronic Journal of Sociology and the Journal of World-Systems Research. Both of these developments have the potential to enhance scientific progress and equality of access to the cutting edge of science. Sociologists are only beginning to become critical of the potential social harm of the universal net, however, and to take advantage of research opportunities to study net society. For an example of the potential vitality of social life on the net, this essay ends by sketching the activity of new religious movements on the World Wide Web. Keywords sociology, computing, telecommunications, World Wide Web, research, religious movements.
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