The revolution in communication brought about by rapid information systems (such as this forum) is every bit as profound as the Industrial revolution. I describe it to audiences in science presentations this way.
Three thousand years ago, the ancient Phoenicians set forth on the Mediterranean, navigating as best they could by the stars. Fifty years ago, submariners in World War II determined their locations using sextants and the stars, and when it was overcast, they had no idea where they were. Today, I can head out on the trails on my mountain bike with a GPS mounted on the handlebars, and I know exactly where I am, longitude, latitude, and elevation, to within about ten feet.
That's three thousand years, to fifty. We are living in a time of profound change that I believe the history books will have to sort out. The Internet is the monolith of Stanley Kubrick/Arthur Clarke's 2001. The real-world revolution is in communications rather than engineering, but the main point of 2001 is what happens to both the primitive human Moonwatcher and the advanced computer HAL exposed to sudden, radical change. They learn to kill.
Now, I don't think the electronic revolution is bad per se, but it does create stresses on society -- such as the expectation of immediate response knowing that the message has been transmitted immediately -- that none of our ancestors have had to deal with. I'm not sure it's even inherently bad for kids to have cell phones, provided there is parental guidance to see that the technology is used wisely. (In the US at least, that is hardly a given.) The same can be said for networking sites like MySpace, or, even more bizarre, Second Life, which has become so expansive it's almost unnerving. The ideas and the technology are very cool, but the rate of change is explosive. I think progress and change is good, but we need to carefully rein in our baser natures to exploit it productively.