The idea that people could use computers to amplify thought and communication, as tools for intellectual work and social activity, was not an invention of the mainstream computer industry or orthodox computer science, nor even homebrew computerists; their work was rooted in older, equally eccentric, equally visionary, work. You can't really guess where mind-amplifying technology is going unless you understand where it came from.
- HLR
This quote of Howard Rheingold is so telling of this man's genius. The book that it is a part of, "Tools for Thought" is available free on the web at:
http://www.rheingold.com/texts/tft/1.html
It is 14 chapters each contained on a page and while it introduces some more complex ideas, it is written in a style that allows for anyone to read.
I got to this man's website by virtue of reading about "virtual communities" a term that apparently Rheingold is considered the original coiner of, but it was this 1980 predictive book that captured my attention.
In it Rheingold basically says that we have no idea the type of world that the first graders of the mid-1980's will be living in when they are graduating from high school and college. That the way that people interact and view each other individually and wholly will be completely altered by personal computers and new modes of communication.
In chapter 1 of this online text Rheingold even suggests that Marshall McLuhan, as opposed to Orwell, will be considered the prophetic voice of this new generation. McLuhan who postulates "the medium is the message," was probably completely right. The Internet has allowed all of the world to become the message and with that an absolute chaos of completely virtual existences and an awkward phase for humanity in it's adaptation to this new and extremely diverse primary form of communicating.
To me we are looking at the world and where communication within the world is going in the future just as Rheingold did 20 years ago. And, as he said as well you can only know where technology and communication are headed if you know where they have been. This man made amazing and somewhat haunting predictions with an accuracy that are impressive. Personally, I think that the concepts that he discusses are vital to not only understanding people and their relationship with the Internet but how the Internet is changing the way people have relationships with each other and with computers specifically and the developing technologies broadly.
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Kudos, Mary, for finding Rheingold, the guru of virtual communities and flash mobs. Rheingold imagined a world linked together by the Internet, talking and solving problems in a spirit of cooperation and collective intelligence. While some recent evidence suggests that we might eventually move in that direction, much of the web creates subgroups/subcultures gathered around particular topics of interest. Perhaps, given the specialization of problems and the professionalization of problem solvers, such subgroups would have developed even without the internet. The filters and search capabilities of the internet might exaggerate the problem and lead us into virtual communities which have a lot of talk inside each community, but very little contact with other communities. On the other hand, many people in one community might also participate in different virtual communities, serving as nodes or links between the two worlds.
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