The invention of electronic media, including the Internet, is the infrastructure that enables dreamers and thinkers to be creative in new ways. The medium is so much the message that we're writing stories about the technology rather than the life it enables us to live. That will change, though. The technology, the new media through which we express ourselves, will fade into the background and become as transparent as contact lenses. Thoreau made a list of everything he needed to take to his life in the woods but neglected to mention his pencil.
Science fiction is the way men and women in the twentieth century have dreamed of the future.
That's why it sounds like the future. It's the same with science fiction, which depicts what is right in front of our faces, coming around the corner at the speed of light. It sounds like the future only if you aren't noticing what's happening. Those digital artifacts don't merely stand for us, however, they become us in the social, economic, and political worlds to which they allow or deny access. Now that photos and all forms of information can be digitized, we know that photos do lie.