The Erotic Ontology of Cyberspace
Cyberspace without carefully laid channels of choice may become a waste of space.
Cyberspace without carefully laid channels of choice may become a waste of space.
If cyberspace represents, at the very least, the birth of a new postindustrial, metasocial spatial operator, it will remain for [the] most part stillborn if its parameters are engineered primarily to function, following [science-fiction author William] Gibson’s dystopic vision, as a virtual world of contestatory economic activity … If creative flexibility is critically foregrounded in current research agendas, cyberspace will indeed become a site of considerable cultural promise, and a locale for a new postorganic anthropology.
This is the most transforming technological event since the capture of fire.
Cognitive skills are going to be permanently more valuable and unskilled labor permanently less valuable.
The technical characteristics of the information superhighway and virtual reality are clear enough to call attention to their potential for new cultural formations. It is conceivable that the information superhighway will be restricted in the way the broadcast system is. In that case, the term “second media age” is unjustified. But the potential of a decentralized communications system is so great that it is certainly worthy of recognition.
Restaurant reviews are more properly considered as a database than as a series of articles, and users should access them in a table-driven search and/or be informed personally when a restaurant appears that has a high similarity score with other restaurants preferred by each individual user.
You don’t need much human factors expertise to predict that a human being cannot keep track of 50 or more different user IDs and passwords, and yet it is not at all uncommon for users to have at least 50 sites on their hotlist. Users will be writing down their passwords (leading to complete loss of security) and they will rebel against the time wasted in finding their user ID and password every time they follow a link to a different site. The user’s computer will have to negotiate registration information with the remote site automatically, based on user-controlled preferences for what demographic data to reveal to whom.
Information is as basic to American households as the proverbial basket of groceries. The designers and marketers of new computer, online and interactive services can succeed by solving the information problems that time-sensitive consumers face.
Despite the potential appeal of interactive entertainment, developers should still be concerned about whether lower income and older consumers, who comprise a large part of today’s mass television-viewing audience, will pay monthly fees to access it.
When I was a child, no one challenged the three-stage model of the development of learning … The VCR, the CD-ROM and now the Internet each represent a step in development that will eventually short-circuit the middle stage and its frustrating and psychologically dangerous dependence on adults and schooling.