self society and machine

7/27/2019 Self Society and Machine

1/19

Good evening. I would like to thank all of you for coming out tonightto participate in this lecture. I would also like to thank the FacultyEnhancement Committee for providing funding for part of this project. Lastsummer I was one of the fortunate recipients of a summer stipend from the

Committee that allowed me to take some time off from teaching and pursuethis research. I am grateful to the committee for making this possible andwould like to voice my support for their continued efforts to support thescholarly research of York College faculty. Thank you also to the Researchand Publications Committee which provided funds for some of the researchcosts of this work. Finally I would like to thank Dana Assed who has workedas my research assistant this semester and saved me from some of the moretedious tasks involved in doing research. And now, I would like to share with

you a story.

Slide 1

Once upon a time, a new and unusual form of technology appeared. Itpromised to make all fantasies become reality. Some called in theInformation Superhighway. Others called it Cyberspace. It had lots of names.

Slide 2

At first people didn't know what to make of it. And many were evenconfused by it. But there was a Wizard who understood this new technologywas not as it appeared. He knew it was here to help people communicated inways they never dreamed possible. So he got together with technology andcreated magical new products and services that everyone could use. Life inthe kingdom became much easier. And much more enchanting. Herein lies atrue story.

Slide 3

While all the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put HumptyDumpty back together again, the Wizard was able to use AT&T'sWorldWorx solutions to put Mr. Dumpty back together again.

1


2/19

Slide 4

And Hansel and Gretel were never even lured into the Witch's house.They used their Personal Intelligent Communicator to send an urgent

message to their dad who in turn sent an image of a map to his children'scommunicator.

Slide 5

The Prince was able to use his AT&T Network Notes, which combinesthe leading business collaborative software with the power of the AT&TWorldwide Intelligent Network, to locate that one piece of information that

led him and the glass slipper back to Cinderella.

Slide 6

And Alice didn't have to worry about understanding the mad ravingsof the Queen of Hearts or the Mad Hatter or the Chesire Cat because she hasAT&T's Language Line Services with access to interpreters 24 hours a day.

Slide 7

The Wizard and all his magical products and services made it easierfor people to embrace technology. So hat once seemed unattractive becamebeautiful in the eyes of everyone. And they all communicated happily everafter.

Slide 8

For follow ups on these and other tales of the cyber-revolution, pointyour world wide web browser to http://www.att.com/stories.

Slide 10

The end, or, as AT&T would have it, the beginning.

2


3/19

Slide 11

This series of advertisements appeared in a Time magazine specialissue, "Welcome to Cyberspace." As you read through the magazine,

ingesting its lessons about coming technological revolutions, you're treatedto what amounts to a kind of computer revisionism in which our myths andfairy tales, the store house of our culture, are revised in terms of this new andunusual form of technology which has lots of names. As you finish themagazine and turn it over to the back cover, you're treated not to the end of the magazine but the beginning. The beginning of a coming revolution andthe beginning of our culture being rewritten in terms of a technology withmany names. In this fantasy world of magical new products, where wise

Wizards who understand the true nature of frogs guide us through andaround the perils of wicked Witches, evil wolves, and Queens who don'tmean what they say, there are no endings, only beginnings.

Slide 12

Doors that open upon doors that open upon doors, each promisingfresh beginnings, pictorially represented by the cover of Time, inviting us toenter a seeming labyrinth where the imminent threat of disorientation is

quickly banished with the introduction of a wise Wizard to guide us on ourcyber journies.

Time and AT&T's rewriting of these childhood fairy tales is awonderful and somewhat portentous if not pretentious example of what Iwould like to talk about tonight: the computer culture. Not the computer as atool or machine that lies there inert, waiting to be used, to be commanded byits human user, but the computer culture, that swirl of myths, tales, stories,and metaphors that have grown up around the computer, cannablizing and

appropriating an older culture and rewriting it in terms of its own logic.Many of us are preoccupied by the machine itself. After all, we aresurrounded by computers and there is probably no facet of our lives that arenot in some way touched by computers. But if we're troubled by the growing,looming presence of computers in our lives, we can always reassureourselves by remembering that they're just machines. We are the users.They're simply here to do our bidding. But this series of ads from AT&T

3


4/19

puts the lie to that belief and underscores the fact that the computerconstantly threatens to break out of the die into which we have cast it. Itforces us to recognize that the computer is not simply a tool to becommanded by the human user. It is also a cultural screen, a matrix or

symbolic form through which we come to see culture and, in turn, ourselves.For we are cultural beings, symbolic animals, and we understand who weare, give meaning to our lives, and come to understand our place in thecosmos through culturally sanctioned stories, myths, and metaphors. As thecomputer appropriates more and more of these stories, myths, andmetaphors, it becomes a defining symbol for both our culture and ourselves.

And appropriate them it does. The computer has become something of a universal substance, appearing in many guises, even in places where we

would least expect it, such as our breakfast cereal,

Slide 13

our morning coffee,

Slide 14

our lunch,

Slide 15

our sardines,

Slide 16

and, if that's not enough, even our relief medication.

Slide 17

While individually these ads may be entertaining, rather silly, perhapsinconsequential, collectively I think they underscore the fact that thecomputer has become for us more than just a machine or tool. Rather it is, asDavid Bolter suggests in his book Turing's Man , a defining technology.

4


5/19

Bolter demonstrates that throughout the history of Western culture particulardevices and crafts have moved out of the Academy and the laboratory tobecome defining technologies, technologies which develop links with aculture's science, philosophy, and literature, its culture. Such technologies

come to serve as metaphors through which a culture can view both itsphysical and its metaphysical worlds. In 17th and 18th century Europe, forinstance, the mechanical clock served as just such a defining technology.From accounts of animal and human bodies to accounts of the earth, theheavens, and God's very existence, the mechanical watch served as an alwaysavailable explanation or metaphor. Bolter argues that the computer is themost recent example of a defining technology. He writes, "For us today, thecomputer constantly threatens to break out of the tiny corner of human

affairsthat it was built to occupy, to contribute instead to a generalredefinition of certain basic relationships: the relationship of science totechnology, of knowledge to technical power, and, in the broadest sense, of mankind to the world of nature" (9).

But if it's true, as I believe it is, that the computer appropriates anddefines culture, it is equally true that culture appropriates and defines thecomputer. It is important that we not make the mistake of treating thecomputer as simply an inert object or tool. It is equally important, though,that we not make the mistake of treating culture as shaped in some simplistic

and deterministic fashion by its technology. As the computer takes up andrewrites culture, culture is rewriting the computer. We cannot, I think, truelyunderstand the computer and what people are doing with computers unlesswe understand the culture of which this machine is a part. The computer isnot simply an artifact which comes to us completely unrepresented. Rather, itis a culturally mediated, culturally constructed object. And how we come tounderstand and interpret the computer is in part a function of how computersare mediated by culture.

Culture, then, is central to our narratives of self-understanding. Howwe think about ourselves and our place in the cosmos is intimately shaped byour culture. But technology, including the technology of the computer, is asmuch a part of culture as philosophy, literature, or religion. And so, if we areto understand culture, we need to focus on its technology and the relationshipbetween it and culture. In our culture today, the defining technology is the

5


6/19

computer. It is important, then, that we think about the ties between cultureand the computer and explore and analyze their significance.

For the past twenty or thirty years, there have been two dominantapproaches to the study of the relationship between culture and computers.

These approaches have revolved around the axis of evolution and revolution.On the one hand, the computer is simply another form of technology merelyevolved from and not substantially different from earlier forms of tecnology.On the other hand, the computer represents something truely revolutionary inthe history of technology and culture. Usually hand in hand with theevolution revolution axis is an evaluative axis. The computer is a demon thathas come to further enslave humankind or the computer is our savior, theguarantor of a free and plentiful future. Both of these approaches,

evolutionary and revolutionary, are mistaken and I think somewhatdangerous as they seduce us into a kind of passivity in regard to thecomputer.

Consider the evolutionary point of view. There is plenty of evidence tosuggest strong continuities between the so-called computer revolution andprior technological revolutions we have supposedly lived through. JamesBeniger, for instance, points to our chronic inability to adequately understandand appreciate the transformations we are living through and argues thatthere are deep connections between what society is going through today and

what it went through during the industrial revolution. James Carey agreesand points to deep parallels in the rhetoric surrounding the industrialrevolution, the age of mechanism, the coming of electricity, and theintroduction of the computer. Each form of technology he argues promisedthe same ideals of freedom, decentralization, ecological harmony, anddemocratic community. These and other writers focus on the techno-optimism or techno-philia surrounding the computer revolution, whatLangdon Winner dismissively calls mythinformation, and argue that much of

what is promised on behalf of the computer revolution are the same brokenpromises made on behalf of electricity, television, and even the Electrolux.Furthermore, many of these authors point to the deletarious effects of thesepast so-called revolutions, and look with some pessimism toward thecomputer revolution.

I must admit that I have some sympathy for this viewpoint. At thesame time, though, I think that it underestimates what is truly new and

6


7/19

distinctive about the computer in relation to past forms of technology. Unlikeany previous form of technology, the computer is a psychological machineprovoking questions and issues of a unique sort that are not raised byelectricity, televisions, or washing machines and vacuum cleaners. Certainly

these other forms of technology have not been taken up in as many culturallydiverse ways as the computer. Sherry Turkle in The Second Self argues thatcomputers are evocative machines in that they provoke debates about a hostof metaphysical, philosophical, social and anthropological issues. "Thecomputer," she writes, "raises questions about where we stand in nature andwhere we stand in the world of artifact. We search for a link between whowe are and what we have made, between who we are and what we mightcreate, between who we are and what, through our intimacy with our own

creations, we might become" (12). The invention of the computer, Turklesuggests, brings us, for the first time, face to face with a creation of our ownintellect that may just rival its creator. To obscure or ignore this newelement, which the claims of the evolutionists do, is to obscure or ignore asignificantly new element in our relationship to our creations, our machines,and obscures how our lives may be changed by the computer and the culturethat comes in its wake, perhaps seducing us into acquiesence.

While the evolutionary claim may simply be mistaken, the claim thatcomputers represent a true revolution are both mistaken and dangerous.

These claims are, first of all, more numerous. Beniger, for instance, notesthat there have been more than 60 societal transformations identified that wehave lived through between 1950 and 1984. More than half of thesetransformations have been driven by computers and information technology.The succession of transformations identified have included the computerrevolution, the electronic revolution, the information age, the age of thesmart machine, and the micro revolution. Today, the pace of revolution hasnot let up. Louis Rossetto, the editor of Wired magazine, argues that "the

digital revolution is whipping through our lives like a Bengali typhoon"Steven Levy writes in a recent issue of Newsweek devoted to the computer,"No question about itthe information revolution is here, at last. All thoseones and seros we've been passing aroundthe fuel that flames the digitalfirehave reached critical mass and ignited, big time.It's the Big Bang of our timewe might even call it the Bit Bang" (26). Not to be outdone, NewtGingrich is quoted in the same article as observing "You're talking about

7


8/19

transformations on such a scale that everything changes" (27). Beyond thepoliticians and the wired elite, advertisers have a large stake in selling thecyber revolution, as we've already seen in the case of AT&T. The theme of revolution is a common one in computer advertisements.

Slide 18

Intermedia "started a revolution"

Slide 19

Nu Horizons' name and advertising promises us a nu millennium.

Connected to this theme of revolution is the promise of a happier andbetter life to come. As Gingrich reminds us, in defense of his proposal togive the poor a tax credit for laptops, "There has to be a missionary spirit thatsays to the poorest child in America, 'Internet's for you'" (Newsweek, 55).The missionary comes preaching the promise of technology. This is a themeappropriated most directly in advertising, such as this for America Online

Slide 20

which promises to make us more capable, powerful, connected,knowledgeable, productive, properous, and happier, if we just insert thisdisk.

Slide 21

Super stack promises us choice, freedom, empowerment, and growth.

Slide 22

Unity promises nirvana.Slide 23

And Gateway laptops, draped in the colors of the American flag, echoPatrick Henry's call for liberty. Newt's laptop promises to free us from our

8


9/19

schackles. One sees directly in this case how politically meaningful symbolsare subverted for the purpose of marketing. The political rhetoric of revolution and the promise of a new day to come are seductive myths thatencourage us to go out and purchase our pcs and online services and not miss

out on the next revolution. The rhetoric of revolution prevents us fromanalyzing these promises and taking full measure of the computer culture bycutting the computer off from its past and its culture. If, as Gingrich asserts,the transformations are of such magnitude that everything changes, we haveno context in which to assess these changes. Revolution cuts us off from ourhistory, from any familiar landmarks in terms of which we might understandthese transformations. It further sets up a mythic realm outside of history andpolitics and culture occupied by our savior, the computer, which is

untouched by our current predicaments and problems. It is innocent,unspoiled, a force of change. If we are dissatisfied with the way Washingtonworks, if Congress is ineffective, our nation fragmenting, our cities andcommunities self-destructing, the refrain, "If I only had a laptop," holds outthe promise of easy answers and solutions. This is the danger of the rhetoricof revolution. It holds out the promise that the computer, not part of theproblem, not part of our culture, can bring wholescale change. And when thatpromise goes unfulfilled, when after purchasing our computers, our modems,and our Internet service, our lives remain substantially the same, the

disappointment and dissatisfaction may only be increased.We need, then, an analysis of the computer culture that avoids the

simplifying dichotomy of evolution and revolution, a finer grain analysis thatdoesn't neglect what is new and distinct about the computer but which alsodoesn't cut off the analysis of the computer from its cultural background.Such an analysis should help us to understand the holding power of computers, why we find them so fascinating and evocative, and should helpus make sense of how we use computers and how they use us. I would like to

initiate such an analysis tonight by considering some of the ways in whichthe computer culture has become intertwined with cosmology, community,and self-identity. I'll begin with cosmology.

Cosmology is concerned in part with the ultimate structure of theuniverse, the basic building blocks of reality. What is it that's really real? Thecomputer has come to exercise a profound influence on how we think aboutand perceive reality. We no longer live in a world of atoms but of bits, not

9


10/19

matter but information. In this computational ontology, nature is reduced tothe digital, for everything can be digitized.

Slide 24

Nature is transformed into an outgrowth of the microchip,

Slide 25

has as its underlying structure wires and silicon

Slide 26

and is even evolving into a computer accessory.

Slide 27

In ads such as this one for a product called Manhattan, the computercomes to stand in for or replace the real New York. The computer literallytowers over and is more significant, commands more attention than the city'sown skyscrapers.

Slide 28

The movie Tron takes us even further in this direction, suggesting theunderlying computational nature of reality and blurring the distinctionbetween the external world and the internal world of the computer.

Video Clip 1

Most of Tron actually takes place in the computer itself. The evilMaster Control Program digitizes the main character, Flynn, literallytransforming him into bits of information that are then transported into theinterior of the computer. In numerous scenes, the movie juxtaposes views of the interior of the computer with exterior reality, presenting them as visuallyindistinct and suggesting their interchangeability. Tron also serves to

10


11/19

dismantle the screen that separates these two realities. It creates an inner lifefor the computer that competes for the mantle of reality. Life inside thecomputer becomes indistict from life outside.

While Tron was perhaps the first to construct an inner world for the

computer, today it has a lot of company. Since Tron , the distinction betweenthe external world of reality and the inner world of the computer has grownprogessively weaker. In ad after ad, we are greeted with images which break free of their computational world and enter this reality, ads whichdeconstruct the distinction between the external world of physical reality andthe inner world of the computer.

Slide 29

Slide 30Slide 31Slide 32

Alternatively, ads such as Intel's thrust us into the computer. The "Intelinside" series of television ads creates an inner point of view for thecomputer that viewers of the ads come to occupy. We take up a position onthe inside of the machine looking out at the user as he does his homework and plays his video games. In their more recent series of commercials, the

inside of the computer is itself endowed with life. We're told that Intel'spentium chip brings your programs alive. And, indeed, we see the computer'sprograms and transistors dancing to a snappy rhumba beat. Life inside themachine becomes more lively than external reality. The computer offers us awindow onto another world, and it is a world that I think we find fascinatingand compelling.

Slide 33

What accounts for the computer's capacity to define and ultimatelyrelplace the reality of the physical world? It is, I think, a peculiar mixture of what the computer offers and what we are looking for.

Beyond contemplating the ultimate building blocks of reality,cosmology is concerned with providing us with a metaphysical map of theuniverse. How do we fit in the universe, it asks, what is our place in the

11


12/19

cosmos? Martin Buber, the Jewish theologian and philosopher, has arguedthat cosmology grows out of our feelings of solitude and estrangement in theuniverse. Throughout the history of humanity, we have constructed imagesor maps of the universe that transform it from a cold and barren wasteland

into a secure home. But Buber argues that today such images or maps of theuniverse have become increasingly difficult to construct. Our world and thecosmos has become increasingly complex, culturally, technologically, andscientifically, and we are no longer able to form an image of it that makes itcomprehendable and livable, that transforms it into a home. This point isunderscored more recently in Edwin Dobb's reflections on contemporaryphysical cosmology, the work, for instance, of astronomers such as StevenHawking. Writes Dobbs, "If there is a message to be deciphered in the vast

expanses of space and time it is that life does not count for much in the bigpicture; all that we do and make, regardless of how noble it may seem, islittle more than a 'stain on silence'Confronting indifference on a cosmicscale cannot help but encourage feelings of diminishment, abandonment,implacable solitude. There is every reason to believe that we, the residents of Earth, are alone in the universe, stranded in a night that looms larger andlonger with each new astronomical discovery. And unlike our fellowcreatures, who have yet to look up from blessed oblivion, we are acutelyaware of our position; we are insomniac and obsessional, anxiously

searching the sky for signs of significance." We seek an image or map of theuniverse, then, which accounts for our place and our significance. But theuniverse frustrates us, is too unruly, chaotic, disorderly to fit into anyimaginable frame. Into this dilemma steps the computer.

The computer offers us a world of order and logic. Cosmology comesfrom the Greek words kosmos , or world, and logos , or reason concerning.The computer constructs for us a world concerned only with reason or logos.The computer is a formal mechanism that works according to the principles

of logic and creates a world for us the building blocks of which are thelogical algorithms of programs. Turkle argues that at the heart of thecomputer culture is the idea of constructed, rule-governed worlds, micro-worlds that are completely decipherable in terms of their programs. Wherethis world is chaotic, difficult to comprehend, obscure, the computer offersus the image of a world of order, logic, reason, and transparency. While wemay have lost our cosmological map in this world, the computer offers us a

12


13/19

ready replacement: the pristine, orderly lines of the flowchart, whichbecomes the new image of an orderly and computable nature. Flowchart,program, and microchip become part of the new cosmology.

This computational cosmology can be seen at work in movies. The

film Bladerunner , for instance, presents us with a future vision of LosAngeles, a city which has already come to define what Frederic Jamesoncalls a postmodern hyperspace, a space which transcends "the capacities of the individual human body to locate itself, to organize its immediatesurroundings perceptually, and cognitively to map its position in a mappableexternal world" (81).

Video Clip 2

In the Los Angeles of 2019 these characteristics are even moremarked, for we are presented with a dark, dirty, disorganized dystopia, adisorienting urban scene that confounds the viewer's attempts to make senseof or give order to what's shown on the screen. In the midst of thisdisorientation, stands the Tyrell Corporation, a mammoth, glowing, goldenbuilding, sitting securely and squarely in the midst of this chaos, and,significantly, imprinted with the form of a microchip, the corporation's chief product. In a disorganized world where we have lost our cognitive map, in an

environment that defies comprehension, the computer chip stands out as asymbol of order and guidance.

The micro-world of the computer is governed by the logic of theprogram. But we can come to master these rules and construct worldsaccording to our desires. Beyond offering us a world of order, the computeralso holds out the promise of magic.

Slide 34

The connections between computers and fantasy are increasinglyemphasized today. One can see it in the AT&T ads with which I began. It isalso at the heart of much discussion of virtual reality. Jaron Lanier, whocoined the term "virtual reality" and developed the "eye-phones" and "datagloves" that allow a computer user to experience simulated, virtual worlds,describes his experience of virtual reality in this way: "There is an

13


14/19

experience when you are dreaming of all possibilities being there, thatanything can happen, and it is just an open world where your mind is theonly limitation.The thing that I think is so exciting about virtual reality isthat itgives us this sense of being able to be who we are without limitation,

for our imagination to become objective and shared with other peopleHowever real the physical world isthe virtualworld is exactly as real, andachieves the same statusbut at the same time it also has this infinity of possibility." Nicole Stenger, commenting on virtual reality, writes: "In thiscubic fortress of pixels that is cyberspace, we will be, as in dreams,everything: the Dragon, the Princess, and the Sword."

The connection between the chaos of this world and the dreamlikefantasy world of virtual reality is most strongly exhibited in Fox Television's

new series VR5.

Video Clip 3

The physical world of VR5 is dark, threatening, filled with mysteriouscharacters whose intentions are unclear to the viewer as well as the show'smain character, Sydney Bloom. Sydney has stumbled upon a way to entervirtual reality and a shadowy organization known only as The Committeeforces her into helping it with its plans, which are never fully revealed fully.

The Committee may or may not have killed Sydney's father, it may or maynot be out to kill her. Those who represent The Committee to Sydney don'teven know how it is organized, what it's intent it, or who governs it. VR5,then, constructs a reality which is essentially dark, mysterious, andunknowable. This reality is countered by Sydney's virtual reality. WheneverSydney needs answers to her questions, she enters virtual reality, which,because it taps into the subconscious, has the look and feel of dreams. Virtualreality helps bring Sydney's fantasies to life. Where in reality she is quiet,

reserved, shy, sexually repressed, in virtual reality she dresses provacatively,plays the role of the temptress and the seductress, and lives out her repressedfantasies. In the premiere episode, for instance, her first taste of virtualreality is the torturing of her nuisant neighbor. She also meets two men in alush, edenic setting for a little sexual tryst, and she is able to meet hermother who has been in a catatonic state since attempting suicide some yearsearlier. Virtual reality literally allows us to wake the half-dead.

14


15/19

VR5 presents us with two competing realities: a dark and chaoticphysical world, essentially mysterious, frustrating the desire to achieve somekind of clarity and transparency, and a fantasy, virtual reality defined andultimately controlled by the logic of the computer. It is this world to which

Sydney looks for guidance and answers in life. The computer has literallycome to define a new reality and a new cosmology. It assures us of a place inreality that is both orderly and designed to our desires.

This computational cosmology suggests a combination of theproperties and characteristics of the computer and our attempt to construct animage of the cosmos, a map that defines our place in the universe. Thecomputer comes to serve as a metaphor or image defining a new cosmologythat is tailor-made to our situation and predicament. This same intermingling

of human desire and computer properties helps us to understand theexplosive growth of computer or virtual communities. Here, too, thecomputer serves to provide access to something that few people can find inexternal reality.

The sense of solitude and estrangement from the universe that humanbeings experience and that drives us to ponder the meaning of the cosmos,also drives us into communities. We are, at heart, social animals. Our livesgain meaning in the community of others. Community, though, is becomingincreasingly hard to find. As early as 1938, Buber was commenting on the

increasing decay of the old organic forms of the direct life of man with man.Buber argued that these forms of direct life, exemplified in the family, theunion one finds in work, the community in village and town, were beingreplaced with an emphasis on the individual and the collective. Individualismsees only the human being in relation to his or herself while collectivism seesonly society or the group. Both stifle genuine community and lead to agrowing solitude and despair. More recently, Ray Oldenburg has also notedthe waning of community in this country. In Oldenburg's book, The Great

Good Place , he argues for the significance of cafes, coffee shops, communitycenters, bars, and other hangouts. These are "third places", informal placeswhere people can gather, putting aside the concerns of work and home, andhang out simply for the pleasures of good company and lively conversation.They are, Oldenburg argues,the heart of a community's social vitality, thegrassroots of a democracy. Unfortunately, the rise of the typical suburbanneighborhood, has led to the loss of many of these traditional third places.

15


16/19

We've witnessed then, a decline in community. But simultaneously,we've also witnessed the growth of computer networks and computercommunities. That the two occur almost simultaneously is, I think, noaccident. For as third places disappear in the real world, we are told that one

can find their digitial equivalent in the virtual world. In The VirtualCommunity: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier , Howard Rheingolddraws explicit parallels between Oldenburg's notion of third places andvirtual communities. Writing about the Whole Earth Lectronic Link, orWELL, a computer network Rheingold champions, he writes, "It might notbe the same kind of place Oldenburg had in mind, but so many of hisdescriptions of third places could also describe the WELL. Perhapscyberspace is one of the informal public places where people can rebuild the

aspects of community that were lost when the malt shop became a mall"(26).The parallels that Rheingold constructs between physical and virtual

third places is also exploited in the construction of more mainstream onlineservices. With their emphasis on connection through the net, these adspromise to provide the connection to the world and to others that many aresorely missing.

Slide 35

The sell the promise unity and harmony in an increasingly fragmentedand balkanized world. Procomm Plus promises us a totally connected "oneworld"

Slide 36

Delphi Internet, an internet provider, trades on the image of world

harmony, spanning the globe to reach out and touch some one.

Slide 37

A number of bulletin boards, internet providers, and computernetworks focus on nostalgia and the yearning Americans seemingly feel for

16


17/19

small towns and villages. Compuserve's information highway includesvisitor centers, shopping malls, town squares, and world travelers.

Slide 38

Visually they treat us to the sight of a world full of people, all out,walking among the town's squares, seeing and being seen.

Slide 39

Similar images are used in Apple Computer's e-world, their on-linecommunication and information service.

Slide 40

And in ImagiNation's network. The ImagiNation map, what one seeswhen logging on, shows us a rather rustic, perhaps western scene, a townsquare with a shop, post office, inn, and casino. It is the kind of town wewould all like to visit, a third place for the imagination, for the virtualcommunity.

Slide 41

The Internet, then, promises us what we can no longer find in real life,a community, a town square in which to hang out, connection and the fellow-feeling of community. Computer networks represent a response to this lack of community. But they are also a response to the changes that are takingplace in our community, especially their growing diversity. In Habits of the

Heart , Robert Bellah and his colleagues argue that what passes for

community in contemporary America are actually enclaves defined by one'sindividual lifestyle choices. Bellah writes, "Whereas a community attemptsto be an inclusive whole, celebrating the interdependence of public andprivate life and of the different callings of all, lifestyle is fundamentallysegmental and celebrates the narcissism of similarity. It usually explicitlyinvolves a contrast with others who 'do not share one's lifestyle.' For thisreason, we speak not only lifestyle communities, though they are often called

17


18/19

such in contemporary usage, but of lifestyle enclaves" (72). The substitutionof suburbs and subdivisions for neighborhoods are emblematic of Bellah'slifestyle enclaves, communities that include only those with a commonlifestyle. Bellah points out, "The different, those with other lifestyles, are not

necessarily despised. they may be willingly tolerated. But they are irrelevantor even invisible in terms of one's own lifestyle enclave" (72). We want to besurrounded by people who share our lifestyles, and often this translates intobeing surrounded by people like us. Our communities become enclaves inwhich we surround ourselves with people just like us. And this is whatcomputer networks promise: the capacity to surround ourselvs with people

just like us. Rheingold points out that in traditional communities, findingpeople who share our values and interests can be difficult and time

consuming. "In a virtual community," he writes, "we can go directly to theplace where our favorite subjects are being discussed, then get acquaintedwith people who share our passions or who use words in a way we findattractive.Your chances of making friends are magnified by orders of magnitude over the old methods of finding a peer group" (27). Computervirtual communities are often described as a self-selected populations of people sharing similar concerns. Amy Bruckman, a researcher in virtualcommunities, draws a parallel to Oldenburg's third places: "The populationof third places are self-selectedpeople go to a cafe because they want to

and not because they must. From this self-selection process emerges a groupof people with some degree of common interests and values. Traditionalthird places draw people from the local geographic area. On the Internet[virtual communities] draw people with common interests from all aroundthe world.It is a strength of the medium that the community is self-selectedeveryone who is there wants to be there."

Virtual communities, then, serve to strenghten the sense in which ourcommunities are becoming lifestyle enclaves, communities of individual's

who associate on the basis of personal choice and a shared lifestyle. Thisaspect of virtual communities is further underscored by the fact that virtualcommunities are often described as "communities of the mind" in whichwhat you look like doesn't matter. As John Coates, one of the founders of theWELL, writes "The great equalizing factor is that nobody can see each otheronline so ideas are what really matter. You can't discern age, race,complexion, hair color, body shape, vocal tone, or any of the other attributes

18


19/19

that we all incorporate into our impressions of people." Wes Cooper, in anessay on virtual communities, points to a subtle subtext here, "The completeor partial masking of identity in many [virtual communities] is one reasonwhy members of visible minorities are well-represented in cyberspace: they

aren't visible. The tolerance and understanding this teaches is a welcomecounterpoint to the increasing splintering of North American society intosocio-economic, racial, sexual, and religious enclaves." Invisibile minoritiesare a fact of this life, real communities. What's fascinating about virtualcommunties, is that they have found a way to make minorities truelyinvisible. If in our lifestyle enclaves, we lack a certain amount of controlover who lives next door or across the street, our virtual communities orvirtual enclaves guarantee that that control is reaffirmed. If issues of

diversity, multiculturalism, and affirmative action trouble us in this worldand threaten to disrupt our carefully self-constructed communities, ourvirtual world at least holds out the promise of a carefully crafted communityof like-minded citizens. In a fashion similar to that in the case of computational cosmology, the computer has become an image of analternative reality which offers us something that we are looking for andcannot find in the physical world. It banishes the disorder of this world in thepromise of a self-designed virtual world.

In our discussion of cosmology and community, we have seen how the

computer boths feeds off of and transforms culture. This same is at work inthe definition of the self and human nature in the computer culture.

19

self society and machine

Documents