The Internet imaginaire

Abstract

In The Internet Imaginaire, sociologist Patrice Flichy examines collective vision that shaped emergence of Internetthe social imagination that envisioned a technological utopia in birth of a new technology. By examining in detail discourses surrounding development of Internet in United States in 1990s (and considering them an integral part of that development), Flichy shows how an entire society began a new technological era. The metaphorical superhighway became a technical utopia that informed a technological program. The Internet Flichy argues, led software designers, businesses, politicians, and individuals to adopt this one technology instead of another.Flichy draws on writings by expertspaying particular attention to gurus of Wired magazine, but also citing articles in Time, Newsweek, and Business Weekfrom 1991 to 1995. He describes two main domains of technical imaginaire: utopias (and ideologies) associated with development of technical devices and depictions of an imaginary digital society. He analyzes founding myths of cyberculturethe representations of technical systems expressing dreams and experiments of designers and promoters that developed around information highways, Internet, Bulletin Board systems, and virtual reality. And he offers a treatise on the virtual society imaginaire, discussing visionaries from Teilhard de Chardin to William Gibson, body and virtual, cyberdemocracy and end of politics, and new economy of immaterial.

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