The prediction, in brief:

Warfare in Cyberia is conducted on an entirely new battleground; it is a struggle not over territory or boundaries but over the very definitions of these terms. It’s like a conflict between cartographers, who understand the ocean as a grid of longitude and latitude lines, and surfers, who understand it as a dance of chaotic waves. The resistance to renaissance comes out of the refusal to cope with or even believe in the possibility of a world free of precyberian materialism and its systems of logic, linearity, and duality.

Predictor: Rushkoff, Douglas

Prediction, in context:

In his 1994 book “Cyberia: Life in the Trenches of Hyperspace,” Douglas Rushkoff writres:”The nets that were designed to hold people captive to the outworn modalities of a consumer society are made from the same fibers cyberians are now using in their attempt to climb out of what they see as a bottomless pit of economic strife, ecological disaster, intellectual bankruptcy, and moral oblivion. Warfare in Cyberia is conducted on an entirely new battleground; it is a struggle not over territory or boundaries but over the very definitions of these terms. It’s like a conflict between cartographers, who understand the ocean as a grid of longitude and latitude lines, and surfers, who understand it as a dance of chaotic waves. The resistance to renaissance comes out of the refusal to cope with or even believe in the possibility of a world free of precyberian materialism and its systems of logic, linearity, and duality.”

Biography:

Douglas Rushkoff, an author, social theorist, journalist and software developer, wrote the book “Cyberia: Life in the Trenches of Hyperspace,” (Harper San Francisco, 1994) a best-selling portrait of the 1990s cyberculture. He edited “The Gen X Reader” (Ballantine, 1994), a collection of writings by the elusive, media-wary “slacker” generation. He also wrote “Media Virus! Hidden Agendas in Popular Culture” (Ballantine, 1994). In the 1990s, he regularly contributed features about pop-culture, media and technology to magazines. (Author/Editor/Journalist.)

Date of prediction: January 1, 1994

Topic of prediction: General, Overarching Remarks

Subtopic: General

Name of publication: Cyberia: Life in the Trenches of Hyperspace

Title, headline, chapter name: Chapter 16: Cracking the Ice

Quote Type: Direct quote

Page number or URL of document at time of study:
Page 206

This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Stewart, Ben L.