[Mb-civic] Cybercreeps Amok - Michael Kinsley - Washington Post
William Swiggard
swiggard at comcast.net
Sat Jul 23 03:59:51 PDT 2005
<>Cybercreeps Amok
Internet Libertarians Should Learn Civil Discourse
By Michael Kinsley
Sunday, July 24, 2005; Page B07
Cyberspace, to its early denizens, was supposed to be a prelapsarian
world, free from the taint of commerce and other vices of "meatspace"
(as the material world is known), full of sweetness and light and
universal siblinghood. In fact, the story line was Genesis in reverse.
Our troubles started when Eve ate the apple of knowledge. Now knowledge
had accumulated to the point where it could undo the damage, reconstruct
the apple (or Apple) and restore our innocence. Geeks who did math were
going to succeed where hippies who smoked dope and lefties who read Marx
had failed. They were going to get us out of crass and ugly modern life
and get us back into Eden.
Well, have you visited cyberspace lately? Of course you have. And of
course the Internet has vastly improved life for anyone likely to be
reading this column. But as a friendly place to hang out, give me
meatspace any day.
<>There is commerce aplenty, but that's not the problem. The happiest
and most peaceful parts of the World Wide Web are the places where
people are buying things. The nasty parts are where people are doing
what the Founding Surfers intended: expressing themselves and forming
communities.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/22/AR2005072201630.html?nav=hcmodule
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.islandlists.com/pipermail/mb-civic/attachments/20050723/00b7306f/attachment.htm
More information about the Mb-civic
mailing list