We are moving beyond the “humanist” phase of history into a new level of combination of human and machines, an extremely suggestive assemblage in which the futures of the cyborg and cyberspace open vast unexplored territories … Perhaps the new modes of self-constitution encouraged in electronic forms of association will develop “postmoral” gestures and figures of well-being, in the sense of Nietzsche.
“Virtual” communities may turn out to be the most exciting benefit of the consumer-information revolution.
When I was a child, no one challenged the three-stage model of the development of learning … The VCR, the CD-ROM and now the Internet each represent a step in development that will eventually short-circuit the middle stage and its frustrating and psychologically dangerous dependence on adults and schooling.
On the one hand, we waste a lot of time walking around and traveling. But there’s something lost if we’re not going to the library and browsing through books, if we don’t have to chat with other people.
When anything can be put on the market with a couple of clicks of a mouse, there will be even more stupid movies, dull books, sloppy data, and bad analyses – “infoglut.”
People on the Internet are talking as if they are Native Americans, and the Pilgrims are on the shore. They think of this as an Edenic environment, a garden, and [they] hear over the horizon the combines coming to harvest its fruits for commercial purposes.
The future growth of the Internet will not be determined solely on the basis of technical excellence … The network’s growth is too rapid to plan its path; the new breed of Internet entrepreneurs will undoubtedly effect many changes not anticipated by computer scientists and engineers … Within only two years the network will start to work subtle but significant changes in our cultural fabric.
Hackers are significant because of what our fear of them says about our unease with new technologies … The fallout from this fear is already apparent … It is possible that once computer networks become as commonplace as our national highway system, we will learn to treat them in much the same way. Rules of the road will emerge, and people will learn to respect them for their own safety and for the common good.
Overwhelmed by data and distracted by fantasy, our attention span could become reduced to the content-poor shards of an MTV video. We risk becoming mentally poorer, mistaking data for knowledge, distanced from wisdom and blind to both beauty and the terrors of intangible, felt existence.
A network chat line is a limp substitute for meeting friends over coffee, no interactive multimedia display comes close to the excitement of a live concert, and who’d prefer cybersex to the real thing?