You are not in control of Cyberspace, it is not there for your comfort and convenience, and no one is driving it. There is no suggestion in the notion of Cyberspace that, should human beings suddenly cease to exist – or destroy themselves in some nuclear folly – the network of machines that constitute Cyberspace would vanish with them. Cyberspace assumes that the machines we have built will soon, in some leap of almost magical synergy, break free of their creators to constitute, by means of the communications networks we are generously building for them, a universe or nature of an entirely new and different order.
Predictor: Adrian, Robert
Prediction, in context:In a 1995 article in Medien und Oeffentlichkeit, Canadian artist Robert Adrian writes about his take on the U.S. government’s “Information Superhighway” metaphor: ”By treating the monitor/TV screen as the datamobile windshield and putting the human ‘user’ in the driver’s seat at the focal point of the network, the branching pathways of that specific user’s interaction with the data-flow can be made to appear highway-like. But one is seldom alone online and each user has his or her own data-highway which, taken together, combine and recombine at every instant, creating an incalculable tangle of paths which cause data-space to be reconstructed, nano-second by nano-second … it implies that, should no ‘user’ be active, the network is idling … absurd, because we also know that the computer networks control, with or without human presence, electric supplies, water supplies, transportations systems, inventories and accounting, telephone and communications networks, and the whole infrastructure of world finance – stock markets, insurance, and banking, not to mention government, corporate and military surveillance and control programs … The stupifying naivety of the technology-dazed but well-meaning, politically correct and liberal Internet user who believes that all problems will be solved when everyone is wired into the ‘World Wide Web’ is symptomatic of the schizophrenia of (post-)modern media culture. When reading about or contemplating the amazing techno-future promised by the superhighway propagandists and cyber-industry barons it is wise to remember that it applies only to those of us with telephones, electronic gadgetry and purchasing power … You are not in control of Cyberspace, it is not there for your comfort and convenience, and no one is driving it. There is no suggestion in the notion of Cyberspace that, should human beings suddenly cease to exist – or destroy themselves in some nuclear folly – the network of machines that constitute Cyberspace would vanish with them. Cyberspace assumes that the machines we have built will soon, in some leap of almost magical synergy, break free of their creators to constitute, by means of the communications networks we are generously building for them, a universe or nature of an entirely new and different order.”
Date of prediction: January 1, 1995
Topic of prediction: General, Overarching Remarks
Subtopic: General
Name of publication: Medien und Oeffentlichkeit
Title, headline, chapter name: Infobahn Blues
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.ctheory.net/text_file.asp?pick=63
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney