Scholars Try to Measure the Impact

Paradoxically, the superhighway may connect us more to other people of similar interests and beliefs. But we’ll have less communication with those who are different. Socially we may find ourselves returning to a form of tribalism, as we separate ourselves along group lines – racial, ethnic, ideological – choosing access to only the information that speaks to our identities and beliefs. There may be more avenues for individual speech but fewer for robust, wide-open debate.

Scholars Try to Measure the Impact

Culturally, we may lose touch with the mainstream. There may be no more mainstream. Politically, we may find ourselves detached from the dialogue. Right now, the president can talk over all three networks to us at the same time. With 500 video channels, that won’t be so easy.

Scholars Try to Measure the Impact

Many jobs are just never coming back. Blue-collar workers, secretaries, receptionists, clerical workers, sales clerks, bank tellers, telephone operators, librarians, wholesalers and middle managers are just a few of the many occupations destined for virtual extinction in the Digital Age.

Scholars Try to Measure the Impact

I can’t hire you if you don’t get it (the new technology). I can’t get a new job if I don’t get it. I can’t sell you my new service if you don’t get it. And you can’t make good policy for me if you don’t get it.

Net Worker: When Susan Hadden was Murdered, the Country Lost a Visionary Thinker on the Information Highway and the Internet

In the electronic town square, we can form plans of action with people we might otherwise never talk to … government can rebuild a reputation for efficacy and fairness … and democracy can regain its vibrancy and immediacy, offering each citizen the opportunity to affect his own future when and if he wants to.

Business Picking Up in Cyberspace On-Line Services Compete For Customers at Comdex Comdex: On-Line Services Attend in Force

It might be used to augment or even replace advertising. These embryonic attempts [at selling on the Internet] are telling us where we might be tomorrow.

E-Money (That’s What I Want)

If anonymity becomes a standard in cyberspace cash systems, we have to accept its potential abuse – as in copyright violations, fraud, and money laundering. Innovative new crypto schemes have the potential for mitigating these abuses, but the fact of anonymity guarantees that some skullduggery will be easier to pull off. On the other hand, the lack of anonymity means that every move you make, and every file you take, will be traceable. That opens the door to surveillance like we’ve never seen … “In one direction lies unprecedented scrutiny and control of people’s lives; in the other, secure parity between individuals and organizations. The shape of society in the next century may depend on which approach predominates.”

E-Money (That’s What I Want)

The institution with the most to gain is the Internal Revenue Service. The computer age has been very good to the IRS, which now has access to any number of databases that yield reality checks on any given citizen’s tax returns. Traceable cash would accelerate this process, and the tax-collection agency can’t wait to take advantage of it. “We could literally file a return for you. This is the future we’d like to go to.”