Although the Internet may at one time have symbolized the very shift in civilization to which this magazine has dedicated its pages, to many of us who have been online since the good old days, it now feels like the Net itself has undergone something of a shift. The joys of online self-expression, community building and spiritual exploration may soon be outweighed by the realities of online self-promotion, income building and virtual exploitation.
Shift asked me to gather five of cyberspace’s most dedicated denizens around an electronic roundtable, where we could spend a week evaluating the current state of the Net. The group included Derrick de Kerckhove, the director of U of T’s McLuhan Program, online subculture archivist Richard Metzger, pioneering musician and producer Todd Rundgren, and technology researchers David Liddle and Gerri Sinclair.
Our online conversation didn’t turn out the way I had expected. Gone was the mealy-mouthed Netiquette, the emoticons and virtual hugs so typical of online cyber-pundit forums. In their place I found the kind of frank exchanges and willingness to disagree that is usually reserved for, well, real online discussions. In fact, more than its content, the very tone and style of this debate--the way its participants bandied about everything from their own online profiteering to the existence of God--reveal the underlying temperament of today’s networked culture.
Here, then, is the state of the Net as envisioned and, ultimately, exemplified by a little chat that went on there between a few of its most ardent fans.