Friday, September 14, 2007

Dead Heads in CYBERSPACE

"Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come
from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of
the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sover-
eignty where we gather."

-John Parry Barlow


Now, not only was I thrilled to see a quote from one of my favorite lyricists of all time in a required text for a class, but this quote really struck a chord with me. It's so true! In a way, the internet has become something of a backdoor to many of the resources which the government would normally control. For example, WIKIPEDIA - Let's be honest, who likes public libraries? Nasty old women constantly "shushing" you, desperately trying to grasp on to some element of authority to make up for their mind-numbingly mundane existances. Not to mention, the library can only hold so much information, and books decompose, requiring expensive and rather unnecessary re-furbushing of entire stacks. Now, don't get me wrong - libraries serve their purpose (fiction, theater and poetry are inaccessable on the internet) for that day when the communist cells growing in eastern Georgia launch a full-scale electronic attack on the American cyber-network, plummeting us into the 1930s. Then, libraries will be the only place for Americans to find Fleetwood Mac singles and the 3rd edition of Martha Stewart's "Living".

But until that fateful day arrives, the internet will continue to make a mockery of all reference institutions that have been in place since the dawn of literacy. The ever-increasing usefulness of Wikipedia alone is enough to justify cyberspace's dominance over these institutions, and it's "wiki" element, whereby independent users can add or modify information at will, has given the world something that has never existed: Socialized Information. What a concept.

TOM

1 comment:

eplisner said...

That quote is amazing. I find it interesting, however, that despite the "internet generation's" great disdain for the "establishment", Big Media is able to continue to infiltrate the homes of our youth. This fact is most readily supported by News Corp.'s recent purchase of social-networking site MySpace. One of the hottest and most visible sites on the internet, MySpace, the brain-child of Gen-Y, has gone from the quintessential example of new generation media/communications, to the quintessential example of young entreprenuers eager to sell-out and make a quick buck. The result? Yet another example of Corporate America's desire for control.