The powers of mind are everywhere ascendant over the brute force of things.
As humankind explores this new “electronic frontier” of knowledge, it must confront again the most profound questions of how to organize itself for the common good. The meaning of freedom, structures of self-government, definition of property, nature of competition, conditions for cooperation, sense of community and nature of progress will each be redefined for the Knowledge Age—just as they were redefined for a new age of industry some 250 years ago.
More ecosystem than machine, cyberspace is a bioelectronic environment that is literally universal: It exists everywhere there are telephone wires, coaxial cables, fiber-optic lines or electromagnetic waves. This environment is “inhabited” by knowledge, including incorrect ideas, existing in electronic form.
The one metaphor that is perhaps least helpful in thinking about cyberspace is—unhappily—the one that has gained the most currency: The Information Superhighway. Can you imagine a phrase less descriptive of the nature of cyberspace, or more misleading in thinking about its implications?
Solid things obey immutable laws of conservation—what goes south on the highway must go back north, or you end up with a mountain of cars in Miami. By the same token, production and consumption must balance. The average Joe can consume only as much wheat as the average Jane can grow. Information is completely different. It can be replicated at almost no cost—so every individual can (in theory) consume society’s entire output. Rich and poor alike, we all run information deficits. We all take in more than we put out.
The complexity of Third Wave society is too great for any centrally planned bureaucracy to manage.
Cyberspace will play an important role knitting together in the diverse communities of tomorrow, facilitating the creation of “electronic neighborhoods” bound together not by geography but by shared interests.