Elon University

Topic: Community/Culture

On Classrooms, With and Without Computers; Some Basic Astrophysics for the Intrepid

Unlike broadcasting, there’s no regulation of online content. I’ve already seen a virtual-reality ad for Absolut Vodka. How long before kids download animations of dancing cigarettes? For that matter, who’ll be responsible when some 12-year-old tries out the explosives recipe in rec.pyrotechnics and blows off his arm? … Once we provide students with network access, we have little choice but to trust that they’ll use the nets wisely. The best way is to help them along, let them explore and learn on their own. There’ll be lots of wasted time, plenty of sidetracks and an occasional eureka.

On Classrooms, With and Without Computers; Some Basic Astrophysics for the Intrepid

Anyone who’s directed away from social interactions has a head start on turning out weird … Computers teach us to withdraw, to retreat into the warm comfort of their false reality. Why are both drug addicts and computer aficionados both called users? Thanks to television, huge numbers of Americans have become nocturnal zombies who spend their evenings inert before cathode-ray tubes. Computing is equally nonholistic: a motionless consumption of the mind … A generation of network surfers is becoming adept at navigating the electronic backwaters, while losing touch with the world around them.

Cyberpunk: Terminal Chic – Technology is Moving Out of Computers and into the Culture

In the future it will be everywhere, but it won’t be called cyberculture. It will just be called culture. A few years ago, people used to talk about “the emerging TV culture.” We no longer talk about a “TV culture” today. It’s a given. Someday soon, no one will talk about “emerging cyberculture.” Because it will be a given, too.

Computers and Ethics

The main problem with computer software is that it has not been clear that we could grant ownership of it without, in effect, granting ownership of numerical sequences or mental steps … The ethical issues that arise here take us back to the philosophical basis for property rights. What should be owned? What entitles one to own something? Are there things that should never be priavately owned?

The Tomorrow Makers

My dream is to build … a community for the young and the old, for the millions of retired people in this country to connect to the 8- to 18-year-olds.

The Tomorrow Makers

Cyberspace [is] a communications medium that might undo some of the damage to community that has been done by TV … Socialization is the key ingredient to civilization and the cyberspace can be a force for good in socialization.

The Tomorrow Makers

Everyone should take ownership of that space … space like that is harder and harder to find. Sometimes it might be taken over by gangs or it might not be taken care of by the city. With computers, you can form a virtual space, a cyberspace where people can come to meet and discuss things.