We could do absolutely whatever we pleased on the Net, perfectly confident that none of it would have any consequences in the real world – the world where people have real jobs, go broke, get sued, get elected, get fired, and so forth. All of this is changing, of course, and I think that a lot of the shock and horror that these changes are evoking have their origin in this particular kind of relationship to the world – privileged yet detached, central yet isolated, plugged in yet disconnected.
Predictor: Agre, Phil
Prediction, in context:In the May 1994 issue of his online newsletter The Network Observer, Phil Agre writes: ”In those early days, I was a member of the world of academic computer research, mostly as a graduate student at an elite laboratory funded by the U.S. military. I and my cohort of fellow Net users thought of ourselves as simultaneously central and peripheral: Being at MIT and places like that, we were obviously central to something. Yet our research was so ‘pure,’ and so few concrete demands were ever placed on us, that we could think of ourselves as wholly inconsequential. We could do absolutely whatever we pleased on the Net, perfectly confident that none of it would have any consequences in the real world – the world where people have real jobs, go broke, get sued, get elected, get fired, and so forth. All of this is changing, of course, and I think that a lot of the shock and horror that these changes are evoking have their origin in this particular kind of relationship to the world – privileged yet detached, central yet isolated, plugged in yet disconnected. This is not to say that I approve of each of the manifestations of the Internet’s sudden intersection with its surrounding reality. Massively broadcast advertisements, large-scale flame wars, exclusion of outsiders from mailing lists, vandalism (as opposed to good clean hacking), lawsuits filed over Net messages, and so forth are all unfortunate. But they are not unfortunate because they represent invasions of a pure, disembodied nirvana. They’re just unfortunate in the same way as war and rudeness and reaction and greed are unfortunate. They obey the same laws, they are part of the same system, and they are all part of us, just as we are part of them. To heal them is not to defend a siege but rather to heal the world in which we live.”
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: MOOs/MUDs/B-Boards/Newsgroups
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.