Cyburbia: the place where we go when we spend too much time hooked up to other people via a continuous web of electronic information
Remarkable book review (James Harkin – Cyburbia: The Dangerous Idea That’s Changing How We Live and Who We are, reviewed by Jennie Bristow on sp!ked) outlining the convergence of cybernetics and the anti-authority outlook of the 1960s counterculture – and their combined role in paving the way for the emergence of the philosophy and practice of networking in the '00s.
When they left their lives in the city behind, the hippie and
alternative movements wanted to wash their hands not only of racism,
the arms race and the war on Vietnam, but the whole hierarchical
edifice of Western society and its spurious ideas about authority and
objectivity… Little by little, and without anyone really noticing, a
movement to raise people’s awareness of social ills had turned in on
itself, and morphed into one whose aim was to forge a more direct kind
of communication between like minds.
alternative movements wanted to wash their hands not only of racism,
the arms race and the war on Vietnam, but the whole hierarchical
edifice of Western society and its spurious ideas about authority and
objectivity… Little by little, and without anyone really noticing, a
movement to raise people’s awareness of social ills had turned in on
itself, and morphed into one whose aim was to forge a more direct kind
of communication between like minds.
