Writing in the 1960s, Marshall McLuhan argued that "the medium is the message," that the contents of any culture cannot be abstracted from the technologies through which those contents are produced, conveyed, and preserved. Even if the words are identical, a message sent by e-mail is different from one sent via surface mail, and a conversation over the telephone is different from one conducted in person. All media, McLuhan says, are "extensions of ourselves"; new technologies literally change "the ratios of our senses," as they alter the experiential structures of space and time. McLuhan prophesied radical cultural dislocations, as human culture was transformed from one that was predominantly local, linear, and print-based, into one that is polyphonic, electronic, global, and dominated by multimedia. Now, twenty years after his death, McLuhan's theories are more compelling than ever.
On the Internet, it is possible, as never before, to display one's own private memories and obsessions to the world at large. It is also possible, as never before, to become anonymous, and even to fabricate a false identity--or several--for oneself. What happens to the idea of self, or of personality, under such conditions? Consider the strange case of Stuart Tiros.
Fantasy role-playing games offer a way to take on another identity for a stretch of time. Thousands of people spend hours daily exploring, and creating lives for themselves, in strange new virtual worlds. These virtual worlds are social spaces in which people meet, interact, and even fall in love. Only a few years ago, this sort of activity took place mostly in text-only spaces known as MUDs and MOOs; but now, there are a number of full-fledged, 3D- graphical virtual environments, like Ultima Online and Everquest.
In the last several years, there has been an explosion in the number of webcams. Many people worry about privacy on the Internet; but others rush at the chance to put their lives on display for the world to see. First there was the Jennicam, now there are hundreds of real-time Web exhibitionists, online 24/7.
The problem of information overload: there is so much stuff online that nobody has the time to go through it all. Obviously we need some sort of filters, to narrow down the information choices for us. The question then becomes: what people, or what sorts of software, do we trust for this job? One intriguing recent (partial) answer comes in the form of weblogs: "A weblog (sometimes called a blog or a newspage or a filter) is a webpage where a weblogger (sometimes called a blogger, or a pre-surfer) 'logs' all the other webpages she finds interesting." Some weblogs cover particular subjects; others go all over the map, following the fancy and taste of the individual weblogger. Nobody's weblog is in any sense complete; indeed, the most interesting weblogs are usually the most idiosyncratic. The fascinating thing about a weblog is that its choice of materials really tells you something about the person who puts it together. The news available online is given an individualized spin. Here are some of the weblogs I've found particularly interesting:
Weblogs operate according to the paradigm of distributed intelligence. There is no one location that works as the center. Networks of suggestions and links are scattered through a network of interwoven references. Similar arrangements can work for other types of information. For instance, Epinions.com proposes a distributed, bottom-up model of consumer purchase information. Products and services are rated, not by experts, but by people who actually use those products and services. By looking at your friends' recommendations, or by reading reviews of other people who have posted, you can gradually build up your own personal rankings of whose opinions you trust, and whose you don't.
Another example of distributed intelligence: Napster. This new software (originally posted in August 1999) has quickly become one of the most controversial items on the Net. Napster is a program that facilitates the trading of music files in the popular MP3 format. When you start Napster, it scans your hard drive for MP3 files, and uploads a list of what it finds to a server. This makes your files accessible to anyone else who is currently using the program. You can search Napster's master list to find whatever songs you are looking for. You can then download the files you want directly from other peoples' hard drives, even as they are downloading files from yours. The actual exchange and sharing of files is strictly person-to-person. The Napster server doesn't carry the MP3 files themselves. It works, rather, like a telephone exchange. Its sole function is to put people (or more precisely, their MP3 collections) in direct contact with one another. In a matter of months, the program has become wildly popular. Hundreds of universities have banned it from their networks because it has been clogging up so much bandwidth. More seriously, the recording industry is suing Napster, on the grounds that it facilitates piracy of copyrighted material. Whatever the outcome of the legal case, Napster is certainly a harbinger of things to come, in our ever-more-networked world.