http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/05/technology/05secret.html?_r=1&hp The New York Times of 10-08-05 reports that super-large telecommunications companies Google and Verizon are close to finalizing an agreement which would seriously threaten, if not destroy, the 2-decades old "standard operating conventions" of the Internet called "Net Neutrality". In short: Net Neutrality means everyone who uses the Internet gets the same "Internet experience" in terms of speed as everyone else. If they succeed in finalizing the agreement and implement their planned multi-tiered Internet services, then different classes of their Internet-using customers will pay different prices for higher/faster or lower/slower bandwidth (speed) with which their web site content gets to their web site users. If that happens then (1) the FCC's ability to regulate large companies like Google and Verizon will become seriously weakened and (2) all kinds of Internet activity -- especially any emerging higher value to students, genuinely educational activities -- will become more easily and flexibly "monetizeable" according to the "class" of the producer and consumer of these services and their ability to pay. Also the Internet services, especially new genuinely and explicitly educational services, will become increasingly costly, exactly like cable TV services have risen in price for decades, and the quality of those Internet-delivered educational services will become segregated into wealth-based "classes" of the producers and consumers of those Internet services. Thus the under-privileged, the poor, and the uneducated and under-educated will remain "where they are" for decades to come.