By the turn of the century, it will no longer be a novelty. It will put movies and television to shame. It will be a tool of the imagination, every child’s dream.
At some point, ordinary citizens linked by nothing but goodwill and a keyboard will be able to check nationwide bulletin boards devoted to cases of missing children.
A small-business man with a modest investment and a camcorder should be able to access the network to sell his wares. Or, if he wants, start his own version of “America’s Funniest Home Videos.”
The notion of self and its relation to community is one that must be taken up critically … Given, for instance, the mutability of identity in Usenet, where it is possible to post messages anonymously and pseudonomously, how are we to negotiate social relations that, at least in the realm of face-to-face communication, were fixed by recognition of identity?
The creation of new worlds is at the heart of what all new communication technologies seem to be destined for. Part of that creative process involves narrative, part involves technology, and part involves social interaction … As CMC is rooted in narrative, it is clearly important to understand the travel stories users tell, implicit ones as well as explicit ones … Some say software will enable all users to contribute to, or create, an unlimited amount of narratives and texts.
A large portion of [networked communications] prophecy relates to virtual reality (VR) technology, which promises all flavors of reality on demand. Some of it is associated with the combination of audio and video in the computer which is to lead us to the long-promised connection between the radio, television and computer. But increasingly there are fewer comments about the wonders of technology and more about the new forms of community brought about by CMC.
Once we can surmount time and space and “be” anywhere, we must choose a “where” at which to be, and the computer’s functionality lies in its power to make us organize our decisions about the places we visit and stay in.
These highways are going to be toll roads. YouÕre going to have to pay to play, pay to ride. That has some serious and significant implications for children. Many households and many children will not have access to the superhighway in ways that weÕre being told they will. Twenty-five percent of children in this country live in poverty. The story is even worse for children of color.
People will become socially immature. Virtual realities do what people want them to do, and that’s not the way the real world works.
News organizations could help people understand how journalism should work, how they can evaluate the differences among media options, and how they as citizens can engage in public life. If they don√ït make these efforts, journalism could well end up as “roadkill on the information superhighway.”