Digital Mythologies : : The Hidden Complexities of the Internet / / Thomas Valovic.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Rutgers University Press Archive eBook-Package Pre-2000
• VerfasserIn: Valovic, Thomas,
• Place / Publishing House: New Brunswick, NJ : : Rutgers University Press, , [1999]; ©1999
• Year of Publication: 1999
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (219 p.)

Surf the web. Ride the information highway. Log on to the future. Corporate ad campaigns like these have become pervasive in the 1990s. You're either online, or you're falling behind the times-at least, that's what the media tells us. Ever since the 1990s, when the Internet gained widespread popularity, it has been heralded as one of the best things ever to happen to technology and communications. Commentators expected it to revolutionize how we communicate, do business, and educate our children. Conversely, other pundits have vehemently attacked this technology. Naysayers of "cyberlife" emerged with their warnings of how the Net provides an uncensored, round-the-clock venue for pornography, for inaccurate, simplified information, and is rife with opportunities to violate our right to privacy. In Digital Mythologies, Thomas Valovic hopes to raise the level of discussion by giving a full and balanced picture of how the Net affects our lives. Digital Mythologies, a collection of Valovic's essays, asks hard questions about where computer and communications technology is taking us. Through anecdotes drawn from his experiences as former editor-in-chief of Telecommunications magazine, the author gives readers an insider's peek behind the scenes of the Internet industry. He explores the underlying social and political implications of the Internet and its associated technologies, based on his contention that the cyberspace experience is far more complex than is commonly assumed. Valovic explores these hidden complexities, and points to fascinating connections between the Internet and our contemporary culture.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- Virtual Dreams -- Virtual Folklore: Breaking the News about the Internet -- Point of No Return: Crossing the Virtual Threshold -- When Cultures Collide: The Internet versus the "Great Conversation" -- Internet Economics: The Complex Synergies of Wealth Creation -- The Evolutionary Implications of the Internet -- Notes from Santa Fe: The Internet as a Complex Adaptive System -- Virtual Nightmares -- Work, Leisure, and the Overthrow of Matter -- Tube Time: Power Cocooning for Fun and Profit -- Quality of Information: The Human Bandwidth Problem -- Information Overload: A Challenge for Human Productivity -- The Electronic Agora and the Death of History -- Inferiority: Our Most Precious Natural Resource -- Electronic Mediation and Technological Depende -- The Psychopathology of Online Life -- Yellow Alert: Massive System Vulnerability -- The Electronic Polity -- The Complexities of Role and Identity in Cyberspace -- Spin Doctors Invade Net—Film at Eleven -- The Strange Obscurantism of the Virtual World -- Virtual Schmoozing: The Ever Popular Cocktail Party Effect -- A Postmodern Dilemma: Are All Ideas Created Equal? -- The Myth of Electronic Democracy: A Reality Check -- Digital Culture -- Why Wired Is Tired: The Transformation of Technology into Culture -- Random Thoughts on the Defining Works of Cyberculture -- The New Media: Tossing Out the Rules -- The Internet and Spirituality: A Strange Brew Indeed -- The EFF and Net Politics: Technocracy in the Making? -- Telecom Unchained: Privatizing the Public Network -- Science, Culture, and the Internet -- Is Science Our National Religion? -- Back to the Future: Science Fiction as Mythology -- Mediated Society: The Cybersomething That Lies beyond Gesellschaft -- Orwell Reconsidered: The Paradox of Decentralization -- Is Cyberspace a Trojan Horse for Technocracy? -- Science, Spirituality, and the Crisis of Epistemology -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- About the Author