Digital Mythologies: The Hidden Complexities of the Internet
Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- Virtual Dreams -- Virtual Folklore: Breaking the News about the Internet -- Point of No Return: Crossing the Virtual Threshold -- When Cultures Collide: The Internet versus the "Great Conversation" -- Internet Economics: The Complex Synergies of Wealth Creation -- The Evolutionary Implications of the Internet -- Notes from Santa Fe: The Internet as a Complex Adaptive System -- Virtual Nightmares -- Work, Leisure, and the Overthrow of Matter -- Tube Time: Power Cocooning for Fun and Profit -- Quality of Information: The Human Bandwidth Problem -- Information Overload: A Challenge for Human Productivity -- The Electronic Agora and the Death of History -- Inferiority: Our Most Precious Natural Resource -- Electronic Mediation and Technological Depende -- The Psychopathology of Online Life -- Yellow Alert: Massive System Vulnerability -- The Electronic Polity -- The Complexities of Role and Identity in Cyberspace -- Spin Doctors Invade Net-Film at Eleven -- The Strange Obscurantism of the Virtual World -- Virtual Schmoozing: The Ever Popular Cocktail Party Effect -- A Postmodern Dilemma: Are All Ideas Created Equal? -- The Myth of Electronic Democracy: A Reality Check -- Digital Culture -- Why Wired Is Tired: The Transformation of Technology into Culture -- Random Thoughts on the Defining Works of Cyberculture -- The New Media: Tossing Out the Rules -- The Internet and Spirituality: A Strange Brew Indeed -- The EFF and Net Politics: Technocracy in the Making? -- Telecom Unchained: Privatizing the Public Network -- Science, Culture, and the Internet -- Is Science Our National Religion? -- Back to the Future: Science Fiction as Mythology -- Mediated Society: The Cybersomething That Lies beyond Gesellschaft -- Orwell Reconsidered: The Paradox of Decentralization -- Is Cyberspace a Trojan Horse for Technocracy? -- Science, Spirituality, and the Crisis of Epistemology -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- About the Author