All so often I hear people say "oh, it doesn't work like that anymore because of the Internet." The implication always seems to be that everything worked one way for a long time (there never is a measure but you get the feeling it is supposed to be since the beginning of man) and then the Internet "broke it". Well, the Internet is just the current step in evolution.

Rather than just imply, let's look at the delivery of information on events. I picked events because they are more interesting than, for example, saying you want to sell something. They have pre-event promotion, "live" coverage and post-event reporting. The event could be anything from a block party to a town meeting to a presidential election.

It is reasonable to assume that when man was a cave dweller the equivalent of a block party might be something like Grog returning from the hunt with more game than his family could eat before it became rancid so he would mention to his friends that he was having a feast on Saturday night. Communication was face-to-face delivering the message to exactly who he wanted to deliver it to.

For tens of thousands of years, it is likely there were not too many advances in this communications method. Possible changes might be

• Grog would send one of his kids out to do the inviting.
• Possibly "a sign" such as an animal rib outside Grog's cave could signify "party Saturday night".

As there is no recorded history in Grog's time, we can only make some assumptions. So, let's fast forward to the relatively modern world. This is interesting because we know that a Town Crier became delivery mechanism for events such as "The British are coming." This person would generally stand in the town square and verbally deliver the news. I don't know if advertising was also delivered as well but clearly there was now a news service that needed to be paid for.

We have some other one-on-one services such as postal mail, the telegraph and the telephone but the next significant change for mass communications was the newspaper. It had a lot of disadvantages over the Town Crier such as requiring time to convert the news into its deliverable form and using materials to deliver it but as I don't see a lot of Town Criers around, it seems to have replaced them.

Next in mass delivery we have radio and, later, television. On the plus side they can deliver current news like the Town Crier did and while they require energy, there are no products (such as paper and ink) consumed in the delivery process. On the down side, in order to receive the news, the recipient was required to purchase a receiving device. While I expect many newspaper executives must have felt like many Town Criers of ages before, newspapers survived. Here are some of the reasons:

• Portability--You could bring the newspaper with you on the train or bus.
• Newspapers are random-access. That is, unlike radio and television, you can select what you want to read about.
• Advertisers could deliver something that you could re-read whenever you wanted and various "advertising tricks" such as coupons encouraged you to keep their ad around.
• The publisher has a lot of control to get you to read advertiser messages along with the actual content you intended to access.

But, newspapers, radio and television all have disadvantages. Here are a few.

• It is a one-way medium. That is, to respond you need to use a different communications method. When Grog invited you to the party you could respond direction with whether you planned to attend. If Grog used a newspaper, radio of television to announce his party he would have to use a different method (typically a response letter or phone call) to handle R.S.V.P.s.
• Newspapers could have require days or possibly over a week of lead time to place an ad.
• Preparation of an ad suitable for placing in the media might be beyond Grog's abilities.
• The reach of radio and television could go far beyond Grog's intended audience and some members of his intended audience may not see the message.
• While a newspaper ad can be read at any time, Grog's friends much be viewing TV or listening to the radio at the right time to hear about his party.
• Common to all, advertising would cost Grog money.

In each case, a relatively simple new system was created and then someone how it could be used to better deliver Grog's message. In each case, better really meant just how to get Grog to pay someone to do the delivery.

Some of you are probably thinking that, for example, television is not a simple system. While development of the television system was somewhat complicated, what I mean by simple is that the system only does one thing. For Grog, all it does is deliver a visual copy of his party invitation to a virtually uncontrolled group of people in a general geographic area that happen to be viewing the receiver at a particular time.

Putting all this in perspective, while Grog can spend less time on the invitation process, nothing is really as good as when he was doing the invitations personally. What he needs is a way to only have to do the inviting once, get the invitations delivered to who he wants and be able to get back responses from those that intend to attend. It needs to be timely and cost-effective.

Things just don't look good for Grog's parties. He now has to work a night job in a local convenience story to pay for his party advertisements, lots of friends don't come because they missed the advertisement, Grog's wife is not very happy as sometimes she is cooking for 10, other times for 100 and never knows in advance. And, last party, Grog caught he daughter behind the garage kissing a boy from an undesirable cave who had found out about the party on the radio.

As Grog is lamenting how much better it was in the good old days, his son (the one who helped with the invitations) said, "Dad, let's use the Internet". All Grog new about the Internet was that he was paying for it so his son could do research for his college classes and his wife used it to talk to her mother. (He didn't know his daughter was using on-line chat to meet boys to kiss behind the garage. But, he was willing to listen.

His son explained that almost everyone had Internet and that with WiFi hot-spots around town and even on airplanes, people could receive Grog's message and even respond. Delivery was virtually immediate but people could read the message when convenient and respond when they wanted. And, best of all, it wouldn't cost anything. Grog was ready to give it a try.

His son put together a list of Grog's friends with their email addresses and built a list with a response system. His daughter designed a pretty graphic for the invitation. They put the system in operation. The following Friday, Grog told his wife that about 20 people would show up on Saturday for a party and handed her the list of names.

Sure enough, about 20 showed up. There were a couple of extra boys that weren't on the list but Grog expects his daughter sent them copies of the invitation. All went well. Grog no longer needs his night job to pay for the ads. The local newspaper and TV station lost another advertiser