I hope that we, as network citizens, take this opportunity to think through which purposes we would wish the dynamics of Net presence to have, and do what we can morally do to shape network culture so that Net presence becomes a force for community and solidarity, and not another generation of public-issues manipulation and star-making machinery.
Predictor: Agre, Phil
Prediction, in context:In a 1994 article for Computer-Mediated Communication magazine, Phil Agre, a professor of communication at the University of California at San Diego, writes: ”Since my topic here is Net presence, I will instead focus on what PR calls ‘image.’ A ‘corporate image’ refers to the totality of a given audience’s ideas and feelings about a corporation. Likewise, a ‘professional image’ refers to the totality of a given audience’s ideas and feelings about you as a scientist or banker or author or whatever. Professional image, in turn, has many facets, most particularly what PR people refer to as ‘credibility.’ Credibility is a peculiar concept in that it seems to be an attribute of you (whether or not you are credible), whereas in fact it refers to certain attributes of a given audience (whether or not they believe what you say). In a world of image-making, credibility is a form of capital to be managed like any other … In general, the Net constitutes a different type of ‘imagined community’ than the newspaper or television does … The tendency of certain types of messages to get forwarded all around the Net is an extremely important phenomenon. My Net presence, then, consists of the sum of several different phenomena, each with its own logic and its own place in my own professional life. I have trouble maintaining a disciplined orientation to my own self-interest, so my advice may not be applicable to others who might be more disciplined than I. With the Net it becomes possible for anybody to, in a certain sense, become famous. With the Net … it is possible to be known to very large numbers of people, without those people being able to reckon quite so precisely how many other people know about you. If a message from you is forwarded to me by my colleague, in other words, I have no way of knowing how many other people have seen that message. Perhaps a million other people have read the message, but unless I saw the message on a mailing list that I knew to have a million members, I cannot estimate just how widely known you have become through the distribution of that message. I hope that we, as network citizens, take this opportunity to think through which purposes we would wish the dynamics of Net presence to have, and do what we can morally do to shape network culture so that Net presence becomes a force for community and solidarity, and not another generation of public-issues manipulation and star-making machinery.”
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: January 1, 1994
Topic of prediction: Community/Culture
Subtopic: Relationships
Name of publication: Computer-Mediated Communication
Title, headline, chapter name: Net Presence
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.december.com/cmc/mag/1994/aug/presence.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Butler, Lawrence