UT ADV 391K - Chapter 1 Where Is Cyberspace

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Chapter 1Where Is Cyberspace?Visions of the Future“Cyberspace” is a term invented by novelist William F. Gibson to describean electronic environment in which data and programs can be seen andmanipulated as if they had physical attributes-shape, color, motion. It rep-resents the transformation of communications technology from a connec-tion between locations into a location of its own. People are able to plugthemselves into cyberspace, and move around and interact with the data“objects.” As a concept developed by Gibson and other writers, cyberspaceis a “virtual reality” that is full of images, some of which exist nowhere elsebut in electronic form and some of which are symbolic representations ofthe physical world. Cyberspace is both real and imaginary-partly a typeof collective dream, partly a place where people encounter experiences thatyield serious and permanent consequences in all dimensions of their exis-tence. Getting lost in an “endless loop” can leave one brain-damaged. Beingcaught in an electronic restricted zone can lead to arrest.Surrounding cyberspace, in his“cyberpunk” novels, Gibson portrays adystopian world of widespread poverty amidst concentrated wealth, of dis-enfranchised populations and brutal hierarchies, of scrambling “contin-gent” workers and predatory corporations, of addiction-promoting massculture and individual powerlessness. For Gibson, and many of the writerswho followed him, the futuristic techno-gizmos are just the surface froth.The real issue is the type of civilization the future will bring and the typesof lives that will be endured by the majority of people.Does Gibson’s vision represent our future? Though technology helpsshape our choices, the future is a human creation. That means we musthave a clear vision of where we want to go, of the values we want to sup-port, of the practical choices we must decide among. We must become fullparticipants in the design and implementation process, providing ongoingoversight to the technical developers, rather than waiting to be presentedwith a finished product that may not be what we wanted in the first place.12Chapter 2Only through such an effort can we ensure that these new developmentswill serve the public interest, that Gibson’s future remains an unrealizednightmare rather than an accurate prediction.MARKETS AND THE MODERN WORLDJust as yeast changes flour and water into rising dough, some technologiesseem to transform everything around them. Steam power, electricity, andthe internal combustion engine all had impacts that rippled through theentire society, creating new opportunities and directions while closing offothers. If the inventors of the first horseless carriages were brought back tolife, they would happily recognize today’s cars as the descendants of theirearly machines. But what would truly amaze them is the way the automo-bile has impacted every aspect of daily life: the rise of suburbs and indus-trial parks, what we do on our vacations, teenage sex life, and popular cul-ture. Transformative technologies bring profound and subtle changes, andthe people who live through the process sometimes feel as if they’re caughtbetween alternative universes. Modern telecommunications is just such aphenomenon.In addition to its cultural impact, transformative technology also shakesup power relationships, undermining the standing of some groups whileenhancing the relative position of others. But even as technology upsetssome aspects of the status quo, it has generally reinforced the larger histori-cal trend which has seen market-oriented relationships expand both overlarger areas of the globe and into more aspects of our personal lives. Tech-nology has helped create the modern world by:l breaking up traditional communities and extended families, whichresults in the liberation of individuals to both seek their own destiniesand to be available for more “efficient” labor market utilization, andwhich brings together disparate groups through commercial relation-ships and creates new hierarchies of wealth and power;l replacing self-made goods, voluntary mutual aid, and community-based cultural activities with commercialized substitutes that bring anabundant and wider world within reach but leave us with short-termand often superficial satisfactions; andl increasing our overall productivity, creating enormous wealth andworld-wide trade, while leading to increased inequality and the trans-fer of economic control from local groups to less accountable andmore distant elites.Daybreak 3The development and deployment of information technologies will con-tinue and strengthen these trends unless we consciously design them to dootherwise and create the institutional capability to implement our plans.However, despite all the experiments and pilot projects conducted by boththe government and private firms, it is still hard to get a concrete feeling forwhat difference the National Information Infrastructure (NII)-the Infor-mation Superhighway-will make in each of our lives.Here are two visions of where the Information Superhighway might pos-sibly take us. These are moderate visions;they avoid the extremes of posi-tive or negative that some people are already heralding or decrying. Noneof this is science fiction. Most of the technology needed to implement thesevisions already exists.DAYBREAKYou know that it’s going to be a busy day because this is one of the threedays a week you actually go into the office instead of working from home.Your car’s route selector warning light is blinking, which means that thetraffic control system has broadcast a warning about problems on the high-way you normally use. You could call up a road map with detailed trafficvolume and road repair data in order to plot a new commuting route, butyou just sigh and resign yourself to the extra ten minutes it will take to usethe regular road.Pushing the “news” button on the car’s digital sound system interruptsthe music to give you a quick list of news items that the car computer hasselected on the basis of topics you’ve shown interest in over the past week.Nothing sounds particularly important today, so you press the “phone”button and dial in to your office communications tool. You tell it to retrieveand sort your phone and email messages and to collect the materials youneed for an upcoming video conference call.Once in the office, you take fifteen minutes to scan the documents,charts, and articles the


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