If you're like most cyber-citizens, you use the Internet for e-mail, Web searching, chatting with friends, music downloads, and buying books and gifts. More than 600 million people use these services worldwide-far more than anyone could have predicted in the 1970s, when the Internet's key components were conceived. An estimated $3.9 trillion in business transactions will take place over the Internet in 2003, and the medium's reach is increasingly global: an astonishing 24 percent of Brazilians, 30 percent of Chinese, and 72 percent of Americans now go online at least once per month.

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