Settlers in Cyberspace
This is Chapter 4 of The Future Does Not Compute: Transcending the Machines in Our Midst, by Stephen L. Talbott. Copyright 1995 O'Reilly & Associates. All rights reserved. You may freely redistribute this chapter in its entirety for noncommercial purposes. For information about the author's online newsletter, NETFUTURE: Technology and Human Responsibility, see http://www.netfuture.org/.
Howard Rheingold is the sort of guy you'd feel safe with even among the most disreputable, unshaven denizens of what he, like everyone else, prefers to call cyberspace. That is just as well, for occasionally he seems particularly drawn to the shadier haunts, where he introduces us to offbeat -- even threatening -- characters of the Net, and takes delight in surprising us with their gentle and positive side. An ever genial and informative guide, he ushers his readers /1/ on a bracing, personalized tour of the online world. While unabashedly playing “cheerleader” for the new networking technologies, he also calls up lucid visions of danger. And those who find his outlook insufficiently one-sided will still enjoy contented hours mining his wealth of historical narrative, anecdote, and observation to support their own utopian or apocalyptic predilections.
As one whose slightly alarmed imagination runs toward the apocalyptic, I am a little disappointed that Rheingold's critical eye is much more intent on discerning the human future in the networked computer than recognizing the ...
Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.
Read now
Unlock full access