Elon University

Topic: Community/Culture

Johnny Manhattan Meets the Furry Muckers: Why Playing in MUDs is Becoming the Addiction of the ’90s

Some people say that MOOs are the perfect model for the Infobahn, or whatever it’s being called this week, making the whole mess of navigating on and between networks invisible, hidden in MOO’s clothing. Maybe. In any event, I doubt these things will go away. With each new MOO, a new community begins and new cultures emerge to socialize a place where anything is possible. The Big Surprise of the Information Age is what people use their computers for: to communicate.

Mr. Big Trend: Futurist John Naisbitt On Why Small is Not Only Beautiful, But Powerful

The individual is the basic unit. This is a triumph and a new celebration of the individual. Some things will be universal, partly because everybody’s experiencing everybody else. And some things will differentiate this tribe from that tribe. The riddle of the 1990s is, what’s going to become universal, and what’s going to remain tribal?

Hard-Nosed Cops? Crime in the Age of Intelligent Machines

It becomes a way of further distancing the cop from the suspect. It is difficult to hit or shoot another human being. It is easier if you have a teleoperated mechanical prosthesis doing it for you. There would be a desensitization here that I’d be concerned with … We need to be careful about crossing the threshold of a new technology, especially a destructive one, without being clear on what we’re doing and why. We need to ask ourselves if we want to cross that threshold, or if the momentum is already too great, how we might divert it. There is a tendency for these predatory technologies to gain a momentum of their own.

Hard-Nosed Cops? Crime in the Age of Intelligent Machines

Within 10 years, a system offering VR telepresence control of a robotic cop could be available … There are more problems with cops in the field than there will be with robots…under these life and death situations. For one thing, the entire session will be recorded, so there will be greater accountability. Violence occurs through loss of control. Not having officers’ lives in jeopardy will allow them to maintain their cool.

Persistence of Locality

Until now, each successive generation in the 20th century has spread its time and energy among larger and larger numbers of people … It is possible, against all expectations, that the Net will reverse this trend, allowing us to spend more and more time with a smaller and smaller number of people. If so, local cultures might in time reemerge from the world monoculture.

Persistence of Locality

The Net … will further erode the relevance of geography in human relations. Everybody in cyberspace is a few keystrokes from everyone else; the canonical six degrees of separation seem more like two … At present, only a tiny fraction of my physical friends and relations are on the Net, but in the near future most of them will be here, together with mailing lists running out of all the neighborhood associations to which I belong: reading groups, discussion groups, vocational and political societies, alumni organizations, church groups.

PARC is Back! After Fumbling the Future, Xerox PARC is Back With a Visionary New Director, Bright Researchers and Amazing New Technology

Researchers and customers, companies and citizens, will coproduce technologies … Personal computers and computer-mediated communication offer ways for people to think about ideas and procedures … The innovations that emerge from that computer-aided thinking are more valuable to organizations than the hardware that helped individuals come up with them. The relationships between people in organizations are more important than the hardware and software that makes it easier for them to communicate. Using computer-based tools in an atmosphere that fosters storytelling, improvisation, and informal communication is a way of harnessing silicon to amplify the powers of minds and working communities.

The Medium is the Message and the Message is Voyeurism

Maybe there’s some evolutionary force pushing us toward a complete exteriorization of our individual psychic landscapes, a mutual exposure. Clearly, we are wiring ourselves in, each to the other. We seem to be creating, through media and communications technology, what some have called a species-wide nervous system.

Cyberpunk

Increasingly, there is going to be this virtual world out there … We need to educate young people about being good network citizens. Many people have no understanding of the damage that can be done via a computer network.