Foolish question, considering that you have to be connected to the Net in order to be reading this, but here at Pollstar.com we dare to pose the ridiculous questions that no one else dares to ask.

This new medium of bits, bytes and tour dates for Janet Jackson and Bruce Cockburn didn’t spring up overnight. It took many years of planning and negotiating, not to mention help from our local congressman in exchange for incriminating photographs, in order to wire the world so that we could bring you fresh tour dates, like the new ones for L.A. Guns and Jimmy Eat World, on a daily basis.

Once there was a time when we were forced to go door-to-door, house-to-house and tavern-to tavern as we announced the dates for Jill Scott and Daryl Hall & John Oates to a routing-starved public. Back when limited funding forced us to wear each other’s clothes as we chiseled the dates for Dokken, Kings X and Luther Vandross out of solid rock under the most dismal of lighting conditions. We like to think of those years as our “candlelight days.” However, back in those days we were so financially strapped that we could only afford the wicks but not the wax.

A wise man once said that the world eventually would be divided between those who have tour dates for Luis Miguel and those who do not. No, we don’t know who said it, but we think it was the guy buying us tequila shooters last night during our latest employee recruitment drive. Memo to our human resources department: How soon can this guy start? And do we have enough limes and salt to go around?

So when people ask if we’re on the Internet, we answer with a big affirmative “Yes! We are on the Net! You’ll find us amidst the flotsam and jetsam that passes for valuable information. You’ll find us between those sites that promise untold riches from working at home and those pop-up ads that want to sell you a miniature Web camera. You’ll find us waiting for you with dates for Bryan Adams and the Charlie Mars Band. That’s if you manage to schlep past the porno sites, the Matt Drudge wannabes, newbies, hackers, crackers and the dweebs who think the X Files is a documentary. We are connected to the digital pulse of humanity. We are on the information superhighway!”

But more importantly, we’re in good company.