如今，一片新天地在我们面前展开。在其所带来的机遇方面，它比育空河还要雾霭沉沉和深不可测。够成它的，不是被充满个人欲望的身体所占据的未被测绘的物理空间，而是无法测量的可以无限延展的智能空间，这就是赛博空间。不管是否愿意，我们都正走向那里。
（John Perry Barlow，转引自Cassidy，2002：86） (查看原文)
Just as the promoters of electricity envisioned a twentieth century with Cities of Light ushering an epoch of peace, Cairncross imagines that the death of distance will also mean the death of war. Her final prediction is for "Global Peace": "As countries become even more economically interdependent and as global trade and foreign investment grow, people will communicate more freely and learn more about the ideas and aspirations of human beings in other parts of the globe. The effect will be to increase understanding, foster tolerance, and ultimately promote worldwide peace."
"Countries that inviest in on another are much less likely to fight one another."
Bonded together by the invisible strands of global communications, humanity may find that peace and prosperity are fostered by the dea... (查看原文)
Power politics certainly had a great deal to do with why the World Trade Centre was constructed. The story of how Nelson Rockefeller stacked the Port Authority with family and party loyalists after his election as governor in 1958 is a classic case study in brute political power (Darton 1999:82). But it was always encased in a supportive mythology as well. Much of this had to do with purifying and cleansing the perceived blight of lower Manhattan and, specifically, Radio Row. For the World Trade Center's primary architect, Minoru Yamasaki, it was simple and downright Manichean (摩尼教的). On the one hand was hid design of the towers evoking in his mind "the transcendental aspirations of a medieval cathedral." On the other was Radio Row, in his words, "quite a blighted section, with radio and e... (查看原文)
A digital telephone network does not send out an entire voice message, as did the old analog systems, but rather packages the message in groups for transmission. Each group or packet is provided with a discreet digital address which identifies it before transmission. Breaking up telephone calls, or television signals for that matter, into identifiable packets enables them to be shipped over different network routes on their way to reunification at the receiving end.
In effect, one piece of a telephone signal may be followed by a piece of a television signal, with another piece of that same telephone call sent over another network. This provides significant gains in the efficiency of communication networks which used to become congested with traffic that could not be rerouted easily or bro... (查看原文)
in No Logo (2000) Naomi Klein maintains that the culture of globalization is built on the creation of a branded world. Starting from the view that the brand is "the corn meaning of the modern corporation," she documents the global spread of brand identities made most successful in such visual brand icons as the Golden Arches of McDonald's and the Nike swoosh. Brands have spread beyond the specific commercial product, like the hamburger or the running shoe, to encompass places, events people, activities, and now governments. (查看原文)
Following a popular, if downright mythic, thesis that the more communication, the better, Lee concludes that television can make us "better citizens" not only of our own nations but of the world. How? First, the idea of "things foreign will vanish." This is because "you can't consider a man a foreigner who has sat down to chat with you as a guest in your own living room - albeit electronically. the barriers dissolve." (查看原文)
In subsequent chapters, the book returned to political economy to address how some benefit from advancing calls for the end of history, the end of geography, and the end of politics. For example, the end of politics is a powerful myth that is sustained by the widespread desire to overcome hierarchy, the bureaucratic state, and the endemic insecurities of a world constantly threatened by local, regional and global military aggression. (查看原文)
As Eric Darton eloquently describes it, the World Trade Centre project was wrapped up in the "drawing awareness of political and business leaders of the beginning of a service economy..." (查看原文)
Why bother fighting for equal access to education in the physical world if you believe that in cyberspace we can all know everything? (Wertheim 1999:281) (查看原文)
One of the more persistent myths throughout the development of communication technology is that it would transform politics as we know it by bringing power closer to people. The computer is certainly not the first technology to carry this promise. (cable television, interactive cable systems) (查看原文)
"If one is afraid of intimacy yet afraid of being alone," Sherry Turtle writes in her revealing study of heavy computer users(1995:30), "even a standalone (non-networked) computer offers an apparent solution. Interactive and reactive, the computer offers the illusion of companionship without the demand of friendship. One can be a loner yet never be alone."
The suggest that successful computer communication, whether in business or home, must be connected to a strong system of interpersonal ties is to challenge one of the genuine goals of computer myths: to live and work in the world without having to live and work with people. (查看原文)
Radio would also strengthen the quality of political oratory. (compared of pre-radio era)
"There is no doubt whatever," one commentator asserted, "that radio broadcasting will tend to improve the quality of speeches delivered at the average political meeting. Personality will count for nothing as far as the radio audience is concerned. Ill-built sentences expressing weak ideas cannot succeed without the aid of forensic gesticulation. The flowery nonsense and wild rhetorical excursions of the soap box spellbinder are probably a thing of the past if a microphone is being used." (Lappin 1995:218) (查看原文)
