Humanists create potentiated spaces in computer environments. I want to characterize a few of these methodological spaces or perspectives for you. The first such space is what we might call aporetic space, the space of doubt, skepticism, and consideration which eventually yields possibility, valorization, persistence, and meaning. While humanists might agree with him about the distraction, I hope that in the spirit of today's dialogue I can suggest a potentiated space of difference. We are surely not the first, but we are surely the most self-conscious age in terms of seeing ourselves living before a constantly impending future.
Eschatological ages have both their virtues and their particular vices.
The chief virtue is hope, that constant anticipation of the next which keeps us poised, unsettled and open to change. Most of us humanists see our task as encouraging virtues and discouraging vices insofar as we can recognize the difference between them. As a humanist and writer deeply involved with technology, I have for some time been concerned with the passivity that electronic media may encourage. The Web, for instance, too often seems a lonely pursuit, something which douses the crispness of difference and community in a salsa of shifting screens. Our culture has slipped the Web over our heads like a lonely guy slips on a T-shirt from the Hard Rock Cafe.