"Rushkoff, Douglas - Cyberia" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rushkoff Douglas)

If you don't adhere to the new paradigm then you're not going to survive.'' De Groot
puts down his ice cream spoon to make the point. "It's sink or swim. People who refuse to
get involved with computers now are hurting themselves, not anybody else. In a very loose
sense, they are at a disadvantage survival-wise. Their ability to have a good-quality life will
be lessened by their reluctance to get with the program.''
Getting with the program is just a modem away. This simple device literally plugs a
user in to cyberspace. Cyberspace, or the datasphere, consists of all the computers that are
attached to phone lines or to one another directly. If a computer by itself can be likened to a
cassette deck, having a modem turns it into a two-way radio. After the first computer nets
between university and military research facilities went up, scientists and other official
subscribers began to post'' their most recent findings to databases accessible to everyone on
the system. Now, if someone at, say, Stanford discovers a new way to make a fission reactor,
scientists and developers around the world instantly know of the find. They also have a way
of posting their responses to the development for everyone to see, or the option of sending a
message through electronic mail, or "E-mail,'' which can be read only by the intended
recipient. So, for example, a doctor at Princeton sees the posting from Stanford. A list of
responses and commentary appears after the Stanford announcement, to which the Princeton
doctor adds his questions about the validity of the experiment. Meanwhile, he E-mails his
friends at a big corporation that Stanford's experiment was carried out by a lunatic and that
the corporation should cease funding that work.
The idea of networking through the computer quickly spread. Numerous public
bulletins boards sprang up, as well as information services like Compuserve and Prodigy.
Information services are large networks of databanks that a user can call through the modem
and access everything from stock market reports and Macintosh products updates to back
issues of newspapers and Books in Print. Ted Nelson, the inventor of hypertext, an early but
unprecentedly user-friendly way of moving through files, has been working for the past
decade or so on the ultimate database, a project aptly named Xanadu.'' His hope is to
compile a database of--literally--everything, and all of the necessary software to protect
copyrights, make royalty payments, and myriad other legal functions. Whether or not a
storehouse like Xanadu is even possible, the fact that someone is trying, and being supported
by large, Silicon Valley businesses like Autodesk, a pioneer in user-interface and cyberspace
technology, legitimizes the outlook that one day all data will be accessible from any
node--any single computer--in the matrix. The implications for the legal community are an
endless mire of property, privacy, and information issues, usually boiling down to one of the
key conflicts between pre- and postcyberian mentality: Can data be owned, or is it free for
all? Our ability to process data develops faster than our ability to define its fair use.
The best place to watch people argue about these issues is on public bulletin boards
like the Whole Earth `Lectronic Link. In the late 1970s, public and private bulletin board
services sprang up as a way for computer users to share information and software over phone
lines. Some were like clubs for young hackers called k°dz kidz, who used BBSs to share
anything from Unix source code to free software to recently cracked phone numbers of
corporate modems. Other BBSs catered to specialized users' groups, like Macintosh users,
IBM users, software designers, and even educators. Eventually, broad-based bulletin board
services, including the WELL, opened their phone lines for members to discuss issues, create
E-mail addresses, share information, make announcements, and network personally, creatively,
and professionally.
The WELL serves as a cyber-village hall. As John Barlow explains, In this silent
world, all conversation is typed. To enter it, one forsakes both body and place and becomes a
thing of words alone. You can see what your neighbors are saying (or recently said), but not
what either they or their physical surroundings look like. Town meetings are continuous and