An Interview with Cliff Stoll; This Security Expert, Network Pioneer and Best-selling Author is Sick and Tired of Internet Hype

I love the Internet. It’s going to thrive, and I’m going to be a part of it. It’s that in order for it to thrive, we must confront tough questions. It’s not easy to admit that most of what’s on the Internet is irrelevant to what I’m interested in. In some way, the computer is a wonderful ostrich hole into which we can stick our heads and our minds but still the world goes on.

Cyber Utopia a Mirage

No matter what circumstances we face or predilections we harbor, the business of living is love. Getting love and keeping love. Manufacturing love. Making love. Making love stay. And no worldwide web of cool chips and hot wires is going to change that. So just shut up about your Brave New World, bub; we’ve all still got to live in the frightened old one.

Paved With Fool’s Gold?

We are increasing the sophistication of deception faster than the technology of verification. The consequence of that is the end of truth.

Paved With Fool’s Gold?

If you look at the future of religion, clearly within the American context of traditional denominations are moving toward secularization … And you see this in surveys, which show a longtime decline in core Christian beliefs. But we’ve already begun to see the effect of the combination of technology and religion in the proliferation of televangelists. With organized religion on the Internet, I think that weÕll see a lot more discussion, but also a narrowing of interest. I think that youÕll see people reveal very personal sides of their beliefs.

Paved With Fool’s Gold?

The director of research for Bell Laboratories envisions a world in which there will be a mass reduction of the labor force which, in turn, will create a culture of nomadic information workers who will carry their offices wherever their tasks will take them. “We are the first generation in human history where knowledge will change more than once in a lifetime. In the past, with each new generation, knowledge was gained and the torch was passed. What we havenÕt figured out yet is what happens when your knowledge becomes obsolete at age 38.”

Paved With Fool’s Gold?

The most important technological advances of the past century Ð most significantly the telephone and the computer Ð have contributed to an information revolution in which continuous data-streams encircle the globe in the service of world commerce. Cultures are hard-pressed to keep pace with such transactions Ð literally occurring at the speed of light – and ever more rapid technological change. The result is what some describe as societal dislocation … “The deeper significance of whatÕs happening to our culture – the sense of distemper and death – is that it depicts the end of a particular worldview. Throughout history whenever a worldview has come to a close, its culture usually expressed themes of anomie and crisis.” According to Wishard and others, America now relies upon the promise of science and technology to pave the way for a liberal utopian vision. But scientific advancement coupled with cultural dissolution has taken its toll. Even those most keen on the power of technology understand that without corresponding social development we will become a culture awash in information but without core values.

Space, Collaboration, and the Credible City: Academic Work in the Virtual University

The interesting questions to ponder are: (1) is “exposure” in cyberspace the same as exposure in physical space, and (2) if so, who among us will: (a) unthinkingly exceed the virtual FARs of stimulating space and move into active freneticism, (b) ever so gently decline into the state of “comfortably numb” as we use isolating environments to cut ourselves off from exposure, or (c) pro-actively leverage connectivity to serve our time rather than succumb to the temptations of too many activities … The answers probably lie in the combination of autonomy and self-awareness that structures individual lives, and the sense of mission that make up institutional memories.

Space, Collaboration, and the Credible City: Academic Work in the Virtual University

We may have slipped into work spaces that leave us nowhere to hide, that over-illuminate our thought refuges with the blaze of activity.

Space, Collaboration, and the Credible City: Academic Work in the Virtual University

The central issues to consider as our telecommunication networks reach toward greater presence is whether they will isolate or re-unite us, deliver diversity through the NII or place each living unit at the end of its own road.

Space, Collaboration, and the Credible City: Academic Work in the Virtual University

People may disperse themselves further from population concentrations and rely even more heavily on telecommunications to meet their work and social needs. One possible outcome of these choices is the re-habituation of people to living in very small local ways, with only occasional forays into urban exotica. The cruel irony of a heavily gridded but barriered travel and telecommunications infrastructure is the possibility of more and more persons being driven into solo, individual spaces rather than into communities of difference and exposure.