PRESTOPUNDIT

Faced with searing images of suffering and grief in South Asia, Americans are finding an instantaneous way to reach out to tsunami victims: on their home computers. As never before, people are turning to the Internet to donate money, the latest step in a revolution that has altered everything from shopping to presidential campaigns.

"This is like 1951, when television really took off,'' Paul Saffo, director of the Silicon Valley-based Institute for the Future, said yesterday. "We are in the middle of a fundamental shift from mass media to the personal media of computers and the Internet, and charitable giving is a logical progression.''