E. you and Christopher are BOTH right IMO. Sometimes that happens. <G>
When I first found my net legs, what exhilarated me was the quantity of information/viewpoints, on almost any subject of current interest, that I could obtain instantly, simply by running a search. In pre-net days, it would have taken DAYS of research to turn up all that stuff -- and even then, the research would not have turned up EVERYTHING. For example, you still will be hard put to find any of that wacko right-wing stuff, or any really off-beat material, in a library. Yet on the net, here it is, just a click away...Like Christopher, I do a lot of swooping & sampling, and there is nothing to compare with the net in this regard. (Caveat: I did say "subjects of current interest". You can forget history, for example, or anything else that is older than the net itself.)
At the same time, your picture of the solitary identity-seeker, hunched over his monitor, is both compelling and accurate. It is true that there have always been fringe groups, which have always published & circulated their "literature". But their offerings were not always that easily available, and they in turn were not in a position to market their wares to the wider public. What we have here is, in fact, a huge supermarket of ideas, or pseudo-ideas. E-commerce with a vengeance. That is qualititatively different.
Joan
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