That day was foreseen back in 1993 (the year I started at Carey) by a cyperpunk called "Stranger", and recognised as a significant insight by Nathan Cobb, "Cyberpunk -- Terminal Chic?," Boston Globe (24 November 1992, pp. 29, 32), now online in various places. [Hat tip to Alex Soojung-Kim Pang of The End of Cyberspace and his "former student Josh Buhs".]
It was nearly midnight deep inside Venus de Milo, a dark and sweaty Boston dance emporium. The Shamen, a British musical duo augmented by an assortment of digital gewgaws, was unleashing a storm of high-energy technopop that was cyberpunk through and through. "We can see tomorrow in each other's eyes," they sang at one point as the bouncing crowd raised its collective fist, presumably in the direction of cyberspace.Meanwhile back on planet Carey... it's the start of the year, and students are facing the challenging world of networked electronic communication. Some arrive already literate, but others - mainly the over-forties - are illiterate by 21st century standards. Like 19th century factory workers or farmers who could not read or write a letter, they have difficulty reading and writing online. "Discussion forums" are frightening, online multi-choice tests terrify... today they are illiterate, even if their spelling and punctuation are hugely better than that of their, usually younger, literate peers.
...
A handful of computer jockeys have spawned a style and an attitude. It's no coincidence that Mondo 2000, a glossy quarterly magazine that trumpets the pop version of cyberpunk, likes to talk about "surfin' the new edge." Way cool.
And consider: Cyberpunk is only a corner of a much broader cyberculture- at-large, which includes an online worldwide population of middle-aged couch potatoes, wheezy academics, corporate pooh-bahs, govermnet drones, and on and one. "In the future it will be everywhere, but it won't be called cyberculture," says Stranger, a 17-year-old Miami high school senior who, like most hackers, prefers his computer handle to his real name. "It will just be called culture. A few years ago, people used to talk about 'the emerging TV cuture.' We no longer talk about a 'TV culture' today. It's a given. Somdeay soon, no one will talk about 'emerging cyberculture.' Because it will be a given, too."
Oh, for the day when networked communication technology is ubiquitous, and as invisible to us as the complex and esoteric technologies of alphabets, pens and paper have become. In the meanwhile, we'll muddle through, and try along with Job and Genesis to help you gain the basic skills for educated survival in the current century!
(Shame most of you cannot yet read this blog post, and God forbid I should podcast the ideas ;-)
Labels: culture, digital, literacy, network
¶ 10:58 AM
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And yet, when a technology becomes ubiquitous (and part of the environment) it ceases to be seen as a machine, or something that can be understood as a system; it becomes opaque. And that then opens the door to 'magic'. No longer do you have to understand a technology to use it, rather all you need to do is remember the incantations, rituals and actions required to make it work.
And, at that point, those actions become divorced from the actual technological understanding of the task at hand, and become instead part of a new narrative world and mythology about why things work the way they do.
By 
Stephen G, at
March 9, 2007 9:54 PM
There is a LOT of magical thinking around already about computers ;-) With many users learning the sort of rituals you describe. So, I suspect it is the opposite, few people treat driving a car as magic, we just do it, semi-unconsciously even. But stick the same person in front of a screen even a diddy telephone screen and they start to require incantations and rituals...
So, I think ubiquitous technologies (like paper) become transparent rather than opaque, we see through them and focus on the tasks...
By Tim, at
March 10, 2007 6:29 AM
And yet, the car is an opaque technology. It's a blackbox. You learn to fill it with petrol, have the 'priestly' mechanics service it, and the actions of driving are disconnected from how the machine actually works. More so in an age where the engine etc. is electronically monitored and controlled.
Perhaps, the problems you describe are more to do with some people being unwilling to learn the incantations to make something work without the other knowledge, while others are quite happy to do so.
By Stephen G, at
March 10, 2007 12:42 PM
Perhaps it's more that, as a technologist, you'd like people to understand how things work; while as a teacher I want people to use them - and if they can do that effectively then I'm happy whether they understand or not. In the age before the model T people needed to understand cars, and many (of the few who actually had access to cars) also had professional help to maintain and drive them. Now people drive them from A to B and back via C, and if (rarely even compared to the 70s, let alone the 30s) something goes wrong then mechanics are nearly ubiquitous.
I'll be delighted when networked communications become as black boxy as cars, and all most people need to know is how to put the petrol in, or as paper and once they leave primary school all they need to know is where to buy refills...
By Tim, at
March 10, 2007 3:58 PM
