THE WEB

Most of us, at one time or another, have thought of walking away from the World Wide Web. But at a time when it seemed that the U.S. was moving toward a totally wired existence, along comes a new study from the Pew Internet & American Life Project. According to the study, 24 percent of Americans live their lives free of the web's entanglements and more than half say they "don't want it and don't need it." The number of people who were once loyal users and have now dropped the Internet for various reasons of dissatisfaction is growing. "Net Dropouts," as the study refers to them, are at 17 percent of the un-Internet population. That's up 4 percent from 2000.