The damage is all the greater, says Slouka, because the Internet allows us to escape our physi cal surroundings. Reacting to a positive assessment of cyberspace, Slouka writes, "The problem...was not that Cyberspace would usurp reality as we know it, or that we would all disappear into some virtual world. The problem, simply put, was that Cyberspace would distract us from the job at hand;...we'd forget that most of the human race was more immediately interested in survival than transcendence."
As can be gleaned from the quotes above, Stoll, Birkerts, and Slouka invent and then inhabit a stuffing-or-potatoes universe: Here's the blue-plate special and absolutely no substitutions are allowed. Given their anti-computer stances, it's ironic that they adopt such a binary logical system. They essentially banish the connector and from their vocabularies; they refuse to entertain the notion that computers can supplementas opposed to supplant existing technologies, relationships, and communities.
At times they pursue their logic to ridiculous extremes, as when Stoll writes, "A computer network is, indeed, a community. But what an impoverished community! One without a church, café, art gallery, theater, or tavern. Plenty of human contact, but no humanity. Cybersex, cybersluts, and cybersleaze, but no genuine, lusty, roll-in-the-hay sex. And no birds sing."
Slouka beats a similar cyberdrum: "Instead of exploring a local farm pond (or catching praying mantises in the park), today's eight-year-old can explore on her computer....Instead of visiting real animals at a zoo (itself already a kind of simulation), she can visit the dodo and the passenger pigeon (and others sure to follow in their path without our very real intervention) on the computer." Well, there it is: You can either roll in literal hay or scroll over your onscreen lover's body, you can either go to the City Zoo or go to your room.
Birkerts explicitly sees "the situation in Faustian terms, as an either/or." You can, he says, either read "deep" the way he suggests or else you "move across surfaces, skimming, hastening from one site to the next without allowing the words to resonate inwardly. The inscription is light but it covers vast territories: quantity is elevated over quality." He thinks in terms of a "face-off, a struggle, a war."
The either/or is so central to such formulations that it is meaningless to engage them on their own terms. How exactly do computer networks erode community? Essentially by letting us make or stay in touch with distant friends so that our attention is trained away from our immediate surround ings. As Stoll accurately observes, e-mail is far from perfect, but the medium's relative ease and convenience allows me to write more letters in the same amount of time. This doesn't mean I spend less time living in the "real" world. And why would someone suppose, as does Slouka, that the curiosity of a kid who views animals on screen would be fully satisfied by the experience? There is no sense here that appetites can grow and expand. After PBS ran Ken Burns's Civil War series, for instance, attendance at battlefields boomed because people wanted to see the places for "real." History books became hot, too, as people sought out more information.
Indeed, rather than Birkerts's "face-off," his Phillips curve of technology and "soul," it makes more sense to think of computers as adding to our ability to interact with one another, to locate ourselves in time and place, to fashion ourselves as both deep readers and "skimmers." I've had a computer of some sort for about 10 years nowstarting with a Commodore tape-drive behemoth that took five minutes to save filesand I've been online for five; neither of these facts has taken away from my ability or my willingness to become absorbed in the sort of literature Birkerts champi ons. Computers have, however, made it easier for me to discuss such books by making it easier to contact and stay in touch with people who have similar interests.
In the Harper's forum, Wired's Kelly suggests that on-line reality will "be an auxiliary space," one that adds to existing possibilities rather than obliterating them. Yes, old ways will be modified, but the process will happen over time and moderately, and there will be various ways to opt out or modify its impact if you so choose.
This dynamic, of course, has nothing to do with computers specifically, but it's important to understand that it generally leaves us with more options, not fewer. Consider the federal interstate system, which is a controlling metaphor for cyberspace enthusiasts and detractors alike. "Thanks to the interstate highway system, it's possible to travel across the country without seeing anything," Stoll quotes retired CBS News correspondent Charles Kuralt. "I wonder if the information super highway will offer a corollarya dulling impact on our cerebral cortex."
So speaketh Charles Kuralt, sage of the nation's blue highways, who made a name for himself by going "on the road" 20 years ago in an RV that no doubt carried all the pleasures of home and hearth. But Kuralt misses the point: Thanks to the interstate system, it's possible to drive across the country in a few days and take a more circuitous route.
No doubt, the trip was more scenic from the buckboard of a Conestoga wagon when folks had to worry about Indians, bandits, and bad weather. But the Donner Party, we can assume, would have appreciated a six-lane divided highway with rest stops and picnic areas (or, at the very least, Kuralt's pleasure cruiser). A few years ago, my wife and I drove across the country on our honeymoon. We took highways and byways and saw a hell of a lot of the country, some of it just off interstates, some of it just off unpaved roads.
Far from dulling our cerebral cortices, if the information superhighway is at all like the inter state system, it will stimulate them all the more.
Subj: On-line overstimulation
Date: 95-10-29
From: Gillespie@reason.com
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