Elon University

Subtopic: General

On Classrooms, With and Without Computers; Some Basic Astrophysics for the Intrepid

Unlike broadcasting, there’s no regulation of online content. I’ve already seen a virtual-reality ad for Absolut Vodka. How long before kids download animations of dancing cigarettes? For that matter, who’ll be responsible when some 12-year-old tries out the explosives recipe in rec.pyrotechnics and blows off his arm? … Once we provide students with network access, we have little choice but to trust that they’ll use the nets wisely. The best way is to help them along, let them explore and learn on their own. There’ll be lots of wasted time, plenty of sidetracks and an occasional eureka.

On Classrooms, With and Without Computers; Some Basic Astrophysics for the Intrepid

Anyone who’s directed away from social interactions has a head start on turning out weird … Computers teach us to withdraw, to retreat into the warm comfort of their false reality. Why are both drug addicts and computer aficionados both called users? Thanks to television, huge numbers of Americans have become nocturnal zombies who spend their evenings inert before cathode-ray tubes. Computing is equally nonholistic: a motionless consumption of the mind … A generation of network surfers is becoming adept at navigating the electronic backwaters, while losing touch with the world around them.

First Disciple of the New Faith Turns Heretic

Many people are searching for the solution to their problems in life. All the other solutions from psychoanalysis to the cult of the car have been let-downs. And then here comes a cheap, easy, technical solution which promises the answer to everything: social problems, a cure for cancer, a solution to war and nastiness – “We’ll just have fast communications, that will solve our problems.” It won’t.

Cyberpunk: Terminal Chic – Technology is Moving Out of Computers and into the Culture

In the future it will be everywhere, but it won’t be called cyberculture. It will just be called culture. A few years ago, people used to talk about “the emerging TV culture.” We no longer talk about a “TV culture” today. It’s a given. Someday soon, no one will talk about “emerging cyberculture.” Because it will be a given, too.

Virtually Unreal! A Mag For the Millennium; At Mondo 2000, They’re Writing the Future Now

Reality as we know it, and our fantasies – or our ersatz realities, these new cyber-realities, or virtual realities – will become so real that they are almost palpable. They satisfy all the cognitive criteria of reality. At that point – and this is the definition of schizophrenia, you know, in the past century, the inability to distinguish between reality and your fantasies – when you reach that point, it’s going to signal a very special change in human consciousness. The full implications of that we can’t even cognize at this moment.

The Law of the Net: Problems and Prospects

Even negligence law has its challenges in a world where the standards of due care have not yet been widely established. Is an access-provider negligent if his or her system becomes the means by which a virus is spread? To what extent must service providers inspect their systems for dangerous programs? These are issues over which reasonable people can disagree.