Using the Internet is the modern form of knitting. It's something to do with idle hands. When you knitted, though, you actually had something to show for it at the end. Thomas Jefferson used to answer all his mail from the day before as soon as he got up at dawn. In his position, think of the number of emails he'd have had. He never would have been Thomas Jefferson if he'd been scrupulous about answering all these things. I think email is a wonderful time-waster. It's peerless. Here it is. You can establish contact -- useless contact -- with innumerable human beings.
- Tom Wolfe, the greatest social commentator of the 20th century, in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, 11 March 2006.