Every community learns its own way of carrying on conversations in several media at once, and every individual comes to terms with the digital dimension of his or her social identity in his or her own particular way, with particular strategies born of the thousand kinds of creativity and agency that opportunity and adversity nurture within us. In the end, all of us become – indeed, all of us already were – hybrids, or cyborgs in Donna Haraway’s vocabulary, living our lives in many spaces at once.
Predictor: Agre, Phil
Prediction, in context:In the May 1994 issue of his online newsletter The Network Observer, Phil Agre writes: ”The electronic frontier is not something we find; it’s something we make. And it’s not someplace far away; it’s right here in front of us. The term ‘cyberspace’ is unfortunate for the same reason; the Net is not a separate space, different in kind from other spaces, sealed off from the corporeal world and obeying different laws … This is not to say that networks are useless. Far from it. But in understanding their huge potential, I would urge us to adopt a different set of metaphors, an imminent conception of the Net, that emphasizes the complex and multiform interweavings of electronic community and geographic community, e-mail discussion group and profession, database and landscape. We don’t really see these effects so long as participation in computer networking is sparse: If you’re the only person on your block that’s on the Net then you will experience the Net in one way; if *everybody* on your block is on the Net then you will experience the Net in another way. Every community learns its own way of carrying on conversations in several media at once, and every individual comes to terms with the digital dimension of his or her social identity in his or her own particular way, with particular strategies born of the thousand kinds of creativity and agency that opportunity and adversity nurture within us. In the end, all of us become – indeed, all of us already were – hybrids, or cyborgs in Donna Haraway’s vocabulary, living our lives in many spaces at once.”
Biography:Phillip E. Agre was an associate professor of information studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, and has been the author of research studies on the Internet. He edited The Network Observer, an online newsletter on Internet issues. (Research Scientist/Illuminator.)
Date of prediction: May 1, 1994
Topic of prediction: Community/Culture
Subtopic: Virtual Communities
Name of publication: The Network Observer
Title, headline, chapter name: Cyberspace Turned Inside Out
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://dlis.gseis.ucla.edu/people/pagre/tno/may-1994.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Stewart, Ben L.