Coping in Cyberia means using our currently limited human language, bodies, emotions, and social realities to usher in something that’s supposed to be free of those limitations … The next earth-shattering meme to hit the newsstands or computer nets may be the result of a failed relationship, a drug bust, an abortion on acid, or even a piss over the side of the porch. Cyberia is frightening to everyone. Not just to technophobes, rich businessmen, midwestern farmers, and suburban housewives, but, most of all, to the boys and girls hoping to ride the crest of the informational wave. Surf’s up.
Predictor: Rushkoff, Douglas
Prediction, in context:In his 1994 book “Cyberia: Life in the Trenches of Hyperspace,” Douglas Rushkoff writes: ”Coping in Cyberia means using our currently limited human language, bodies, emotions, and social realities to usher in something that’s supposed to be free of those limitations. Things like virtual reality, smart bars, hypertext, the WELL, role-playing games, DMT, Ecstasy, house, fractals, sampling, anti-Muzak, technoshamanism, ecoterrorism, morphogenesis, video cyborgs, Toon Town, and Mondo 2000 are what slowly pull our society – even our world – past the event horizon of the great attractor at the end of time. But, just like these, the next earth-shattering meme to hit the newsstands or computer nets may be the result of a failed relationship, a drug bust, an abortion on acid, or even a piss over the side of the porch. Cyberia is frightening to everyone. Not just to technophobes, rich businessmen, midwestern farmers, and suburban housewives, but, most of all, to the boys and girls hoping to ride the crest of the informational wave. Surf’s up.”
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 18: May the Best Meme Win
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
Page 236
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Stewart, Ben L.