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Article: What are we doing on-line?. (debate on the social consequences of online communications; includes excerpts from online chat sessions about Internet addiction)(Panel Discussion)(Cover Story)
- Article from:
- Harper's Magazine
- Article date:
- August 1, 1995
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1995 Harper's Magazine Foundation. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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"We become what we behold," Marshall McLuhan wrote in 1964. "We shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us." The medium beheld with the most interest in McLuhan's day was television. Now, thirty years later, we have shaped for ourselves a new communications tool--the millions of networked computers that make up the Internet. It is a medium that is both like television--in that it involves people staring at glowing screens, sharing experiences, real and imagined, over vast distances--and unlike television--in that it is decentralized, interactive, and based on the written word.
Although considerable attention has been directed to the superficial aspects of the ...
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