The Internet Imaginaire

Description

In The Internet Imaginaire, sociologist Patrice Flichy examines the collective vision that shaped the emergence of the Internet--the social imagination that envisioned a technological utopia in the birth of a new technology. By examining in detail the discourses surrounding the development of the Internet in the United States in the 1990s (and considering them an integral part of that development), Flichy shows how an entire society began a new technological era. The metaphorical "information superhighway" became a technical utopia that informed a technological program. The Internet imaginaire, Flichy argues, led software designers, businesses, politicians, and individuals to adopt this one technology instead of another.

Flichy draws on writings by experts--paying particular attention to the gurus of Wired magazine, but also citing articles in Time, Newsweek, and Business Week--from 1991 to 1995. He describes two main domains of the technical imaginaire: the utopias (and ideologies) associated with the development of technical devices and the depictions of an imaginary digital society. He analyzes the founding myths of cyberculture--the representations of technical systems expressing the dreams and experiments of designers and promoters that developed around information highways, the 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, the body and the virtual, cyberdemocracy and the end of politics, and the new economy of the immaterial.

Patrice Flichy is Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Marne de la Valleé, France.

《網際網路的想像》是社會學家帕特里斯·弗利希（Patrice Flichy）對塑造網際網路出現的集體視野進行研究的著作。這本書探討了在1990年代美國發展網際網路的過程中所出現的各種言論，並將其視為整個社會進入一個新的科技時代的一部分。弗利希認為，隱喻性的「資訊高速公路」成為了一個技術烏托邦，影響了軟體設計師、企業、政治家和個人選擇採用這項技術而非其他技術。他引用了1991年至1995年間專家的著作，特別是《Wired》雜誌的專家，並引用了《Time》、《Newsweek》和《Business Week》等刊物的文章。他描述了技術想像的兩個主要領域：與技術設備發展相關的烏托邦（和意識形態），以及對虛擬數位社會的描繪。他分析了網絡文化的創始神話，即表達設計師和推廣者的夢想和實驗的技術系統的表現，這些系統圍繞著資訊高速公路、網際網路、佈告欄系統和虛擬現實發展起來。此外，他還探討了「虛擬社會想像」的論文，討論了從泰亨哈德·德尚丹（Teilhard de Chardin）到威廉·吉布森（William Gibson）的幻想家、身體與虛擬、網絡民主與政治終結，以及非物質新經濟等議題。帕特里斯·弗利希是法國馬恩河谷大學社會學系的教授。