"Every Home Is Wired": 1 -- Endnotes

If you followed a link from the thesis text, the yellow arrows will lead you back to the bite you came from.

11	The influence of special technological features in this is obvious: messages do not "simply represent a conversion into print of text that would be communicated orally in face-to-face interactions. Because of the Net's asynchronicity, written utterances can be devised and formulated in peace" (Döring, "Einsam", n. pag.).
12	Too rapid technological change may hinder the production of such social space, though. Not only does the vast majority of the world's population still have to gain access to the Net, but Net users are also divided into those geared up enough to make use of all the Net's latest offerings, and those able only to access its simpler services. Thus, for all the Net's "promise ... to spread knowledge, its paradox consists in the fact that the speed of change sometimes precludes the possibility of full participation. Beyond the democratic ideal of diversity, then, the Internet enforces uniformity" (Interrogate the Internet [research group] 127); a uniformity, to be fair, more of the technological means of interaction than of the content of interaction. Also, those Internet technologies drawing the largest numbers of participants still remain the technologically simpler ones (for that very reason, probably), so that divisions into 'information-rich' and 'information-poor' on the Net are not an acute problem so far.

Section 1 Endnotes -- Go on to Bite:

© 1998 Axel Bruns