It seemed to us to be an amusing premise, so we asked Huber whether his 1994 is a funny book. Well, it's about as funny as Orwell's 1984, which of course isn't funny at all, until you grasp just how wrong Orwell was, and then it's quite amusing. I'm sure some people will think my book is funny in just the same way. Since the world sometimes divides between technological optimists and technological pessimists, we asked him whether he thought of information and communication technology as essentially benign, capable of leading us in fact to a utopia. Freedom and organization can be reconciled.
Cooperation can be by consent.
New technology contains the power to forge a new kind of brotherhood, an equal dignity among people who choose freely to collaborate amongst themselves. For the first time in history, it is possible to have brotherhood without Big Brother. Technology is neither inherently good nor inherently evil, it's just powerful. With that said, computers and telephones are evolving today in a way that decentralizes and disperses authority, without leaving people in anarchistic isolation. I view that tendency as benign.