BOB GARFIELD:
What with all the bad behavior we report in media and government, we well understand this show can get a little depressing. Well, at least this one time, we bring you the most wonderful news. In a Zogby/463 Communications poll released this week, 11 percent of all Americans said they'd be willing to have a brain implant giving their thoughts access to the Internet. This is, obviously, a great boon to brain implant activists and all others who believe that Microsoft Explorer is just not quite dehumanizing enough.

But the poll's even more encouraging revelation is that despite all the breast-beating and gnashing of teeth by social scientists and psychologists, the online world is apparently not a contributor to American society's loneliness and isolation. On the contrary, it may well be the remedy.

Twenty-four percent of respondents said the Internet could be a satisfactory substitute for a mate. Duh! You can chat on it, go to the movies on it, laze around on a Sunday with The New York Times with it. If you're digitally adept, you can certainly have sex with it, and without all that annoying hugging afterwards.

About the only function of a significant other it can't approximate is actual procreation, which is why, after these poll results, the Republicans will probably try to add the Internet to the Defensive Marriage Act. But maybe they should think twice. If Senators Larry Craig and David Vitter had managed their loneliness online, instead of the analog way, nobody would be the wiser.
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Besides, while the old paradigm of human mate looks nice in campaign commercials and so forth, it does not come with -- free email.
GROUP SINGING:
If you like surfing on YouTube, playing poker ‘til dawn, if you dig Paris Hilton or the skankiest porn, if your life starts at midnight, like some freak in a cape then I'm the love that you look for. Log on and escape.
BOB GARFIELD:
That's it for this week's show. On the Media was produced by Megan Ryan, Jamie York, Mike Vuolo, Mark Phillips and Nazanin Rafsanjani, and edited -- by Brooke. Dylan Keefe is our technical director and Jennifer Munson our engineer, with help from Andrya Ambro and Paul Schneider. We had help from Ian Whitehead and Jessica Magaldi. Our webmaster is Amy Pearl.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
Katya Rogers is our senior producer and John Keefe our executive producer. Bassist/composer Ben Allison wrote our theme. You can listen to the program and find free transcripts, MP3 downloads and our podcast at onthemedia.org. You can also post comments there and email us at onthemedia@wnyc.org. This is On the Media from WNYC. I'm Brooke Gladstone.
BOB GARFIELD:
And I'm Bob Garfield.
(FUNDING CREDITS)