Internet is global and multicultural or is not. And Internet materializes the dream of free global communication, as expressed in the cultural, libertarian movements that emerged in the transition to the Information Age, in California, in Paris, in Germany, in Scandinavia, and in many countries around the world. I have a few problems with Naughton s book. But what really bothered me, in the first pages of the book, was Naughton s awe vis a vis the technology, so much unlike himself, and so much like the usual futurology suspects. And yet, after seeing my students, let alone my grandchildren, to use Internet as their way of life, I find shocking to spend a few paragraphs in praising the technology.
Internet is, period.
We live in and by Internet. It is the networked fabric of our lives. That I have so rapidly lost the sense of history regarding the Internet, vividly shows how necessary is the wonderful and thorough historical reminder delivered to us by John Naughton.