Electronic media decompose holistic experience into analytically distinct sensory dimensions and then transmit the latter. At the receiving end, people can resynthesize the resulting parts into a coherent experience, but the new whole is invariably different and, in some fundamental sense, less than the original.
I have grave doubts whether an overwhelming number of information professionals can find their most useful economic role as freelance infomercenaries who just get plugged in to do their bit of isolated work and then are dismissed. Information systems are the central element of how the modern enterprise governs itself, how it responds to external opportunities, and how it manages its resources. This requires a great deal of company-specific know-how, as well as a steady accumulation of knowledge.
Could such “virtual communities” eventually replace geographically localized social relations? There are reasons to suspect that, as the foundation for a democratic society, virtual communities will remain seriously deficient.
This will pave the way for what he and his colleagues call the “network computer” … If you build in Java, you’re not tied to an Intel or Windows architecture, and you’re not required to update the application’ every time those companies change a microprocessor or operating-system design. The whole industry is focused on how to win in this new paradigm.
Atomized systems professionals would be connected by multimedia Internet workstations. This would allow these individuals to offer their services in an electronic auction market. The allocation of resources would then be accomplished by competition and not by “management.” I have labeled this model “electronically mediated mercenary outsourcing.”
Whether it’s 6 million or 60 million, it’s still an opportunity, and the biggest opportunity is within the business community.
Hypertext does not translate into print … Artists who work there must be read there. And they will probably be judged there as well: criticism, like fiction, is moving off the page and online, and it is itself susceptible to continuous changes of mind and text. Fluidity, contingency, indeterminacy, plurality, discontinuity are the hypertext buzzwords of the day, and they seem to be fast becoming principles, in the same way that relativity not so long ago displaced the falling apple.
Venerable novelistic values like unity, integrity, vision, voice seem to be in danger. Eloquence is being redefined. “Text” has lost its canonical certainty. How does one judge, analyze, write about a work that never reads the same way twice? … How does one resolve the conflict between the reader’s desire for coherence and closure and the text’s desire for continuance, its fear of death?
Digital convergence is not a futuristic prospect or a choice to be made among other choices; it is an onrushing train. The digitalization of all forms of information (including the transmission of sensations) has proven itself to be accurate, economical, ecologically wise, universally applicable, easy to use, and fast as light.
We’re selling off our high-tech future in a way that’s not being discussed … This is the best country in the world at innovating, but to allow our technological future to be harvested by our chief competitor is extremely dangerous.