All of our culture – advertising, business, laws, government agencies, newspapers, public opinion – is all going to start to be part of the Net like it is part of our newspapers, telephone, postal system and so on. We’re going to embrace this part of our culture and things are going to change a lot.
The Net … is going to become more and more commercial because the government is going to want to stop paying for it. In other countries, they’re much smaller, and I don’t know if it could be supported by direct market competition, so the government will probably still support the Net.
It’s the largest gathering of human beings that has ever existed in the history of mankind and it’s getting larger and larger. It looks like it’s going to be the ancestor of something that eventually everybody will be able to gather whenever they want.
Human behavior in cyberspace, as we can observe it today on the Nets and in the BBSs, gives rise to important questions about the effects of communication technology on human values. What kinds of humans are we becoming in an increasingly computer-mediated world, and do we have any control over that transformation? How have our definitions of “human” and “community” been under pressure to change to fit the specifications of a technology-guided civilization?
Laws that infringe equity of access to and freedom of expression in cyberspace could transform today’s populist empowerment into yet another instrument of manipulation. Will “electronic democracy” be an accurate description of political empowerment that grows out of the screen of a computer? Or will it become a brilliant piece of disinfotainment, another means of manipulating emotions and manufacturing public opinion in the service of power?
If the use of virtual communities turns out to answer a deep and compelling need in people, and not just snag onto a human foible like pinball or Pac-man, today’s small online enclaves may grow into much larger networks over the next 20 years.
It is this spirit, the type of fundamental human regard that so often appears to be in short supply in the “real” world, that may prove to be the most exhilarating and empowering aspect of this evolving technology.
If a significant part of a population begins to form social relationships on computer networks, then the rest of the population, even if it is the majority, will be less able to participate fully in all aspects of the society, much less to monitor, even benignly, the activities of computer users … As communities develop on the Net, it will become increasingly important to observe how power and authority are distributed and what effect that distribution has on discourse within the public sphere.
Interactive technologies pose great opportunities, but we need to realize that if we don’t protect personal information on the highway up front, people won’t use it.
How many hick sheriffs or local party bosses or nosy night staff are likely to make unauthorized use of this Congressionally mandated snoop-n-peep technology against boy – and girlfriends, family members, personal enemies, business competitors, and – most dangerously – political opponents?