Technologies Without Boundaries: On Telecommunications in a Global Age.

Abstract

...attempt to describe the tricky geography of our electronic info-world. .. traces the tecnnological changes that have brought us this far...phone system .....They can build "the largest machine that man has ever constructed -- the global telecommunicatiosn network. The full map of it no one knows: it changes every day" >> In 1937 H. G. Wells foresaw this when he described a "world brain" that contained information not in bound volumes but in "depots" where knowledge could be processed and retrieved. He sees the new technology as fostering global pluralism, but wonders whether pluralism won't have problems of its own....globopolis ... inordinately influenced by the West.....comes down ... on side of free market forces ... stresses that all cultures are essentially hybrid.. .. lack of anxiety about global homogenization.....more work done at home .. .. thinks this may revere the separation of work for home that typifies industrialization and thus eliminate "alienation". But who said "alienation" was just another word for commuting? --Luis H. Francia, Voice (1/29/91)[notes]