The Tower of Infobabel: Cyberspace as Alternative Universe

Abstract

Fin-de-siecle capitalist culture is awash with prophecies of revolution. We are told that we are in the process of a transformation so profound that we can barely discern its implications. But this time the spectre is not that of revolution from below, but from outside, through the miraculous agency of that deus ex machina, technology. The Agricultural Revolution and the Industrial Revolution are now to be surpassed by the Information Revolution. The computer is transforming economy, society, culture, human beings themselves.