The Pattern in the Mosaic
We’ll have a consolidation of long-distance voice and data communications into one model. The Internet is a more legitimate cost-effective way than a private network for a small organization to have worldwide reach.
Archives: Expert Predictions
Cityspace, Cyberspace and the Spatiology of Information
Finally this is what cyberspace is all about. It is, in a way, the revenge of the architects, urbanists, and environmentalists upon the media moguls, computerists, and developers. Even as the world we know becomes placeless under their ministrations, and even as we fight to preserve and enrich it, so we must construct another one which we have not yet fully seen, a world in another image and from a material that is actually the universe’s oldest and only material: information itself.
Third Conference on Computers, Freedom and Privacy – CFP’93
Personal privacy is increasingly at risk from invasion by high-tech surveillance and eavesdropping. The myriad databases containing personal information maintained in the public and private sectors expose private life to constant scrutiny.
Computopia: Sharing Stories Humanizes Computer Connections
Pre-recorded media are all shifting to a computer. Soon, leaving your house to see a movie will be a rare occasion. Even now, more people rent movies than go to see them. Someday you won’t even have to leave home for that. All that media will be available through a wire into any room in your house – projected on your living room wall, or the screen of your watch.
The Pattern in the Mosaic
What the Internet will become is like a phone system – Internet dial tone. Anybody will be able to get an interconnection as easily as getting a phone installed, from a local phone company, AT&T, MCI, Sprint, France Telecom or anybody else. It will be a bunch of separate networks with exchange agreements. Each will have a set of people connected directly to it, but users won’t want to get involved in which branch they’re on. You’ll get it from cable or telephone, or whatever. It’s just data services.
Computopia: Sharing Stories Humanizes Computer Connections
When so much human content becomes available over the wires, we can convert their current concrete receptacles back into soil space. In this way, computers could promote deurbanization … No longer will towers of glass and steel house the most vital aspects of our economy – people will be rooted in their local communities while maintaining global presence.
The Pattern in the Mosaic
Three to five years from now there will be a new type of medium for society in general.
Cityspace, Cyberspace and the Spatiology of Information
40 million simultaneous phone calls, with or without video, don’t make cyberspace unless the people making them can hear or not hear each other, see or not see each other “isovistically,” as a function of position and orientation in a virtual space given by the system itself. Design is required. Architecture is required; and not just to cope with the impact of cyberspace on the surface of the earth, but to give shape to the spaces flowing out of the information flowing between real places and real people.
Cliff Figallo of the WELL Named to EFF’s Cambridge Office
Pioneers in electronic or telecommunications media are establishing new definitions and structures for education, community, and cooperation every day. They are developing tools and systems which may prove to be vital to the salvation of the planet.
Third Conference on Computers, Freedom and Privacy – CFP’93
The advance of computer and telecommunications technologies holds great promise for individuals and society. From convenience for consumers and efficiency in commerce to improved public health and safety and increased participation in democratic institutions, these technologies can fundamentally transform our lives.