West by Northwest. Many Americans have seen the digital dream of global communications vividly expressed on TV commercials for Cisco Systems.
History tells cautionary tales.
Each technological generation provided a new opportunity to propagate the grand narratives of general concord and social reconciliation under the aegis of Western civilization. Whether the instruments of unprecedented change were railroads, undersea cables or electric patents, promoters spoke of wondrous horizons. Elites routinely won those struggles. In our own time, technology has often appeared to offer the means for global solutions. As a way out of this dual impasse, information and communication networks had become the panacea.