Cyberia

Cyberia
Life in the Trenches of
Hyperspace
By Douglas Rushkoff

Preface to the 1994 paperback edition
A lot has happened in the year or so since I wrote this book. More than
usually happens in a year. Thanks to technologies like the computer, the modem,
interactive media, and the Internet, we no longer depend on printed matter or word
of mouth to explore the latest rages, innovations,or discoveries. By the time a
story hits the newstands, most insiders consider it "old news" and are already hard
at work on the next flurry of culture-bending inventions and activities.
Cyberia is about a very special moment in our recent history -- a moment
when anything seemed possible. When an entire subculture -- like a kid at a rave
trying virtual reality for the first time -- saw thewild potentials of marrying the
latest computer technologies with the most intimately held dreams and the most
ancient spiritual truths. It is a moment that predates America Online, twenty million
Internet subscribers, Wired magazine, Bill Clinton, and the Information
Superhighway. But it is a moment that foresaw a whole lot more.
This book is not a survey of everything and everyone "cyber" butrather a
tour through some of the regions of this new, fledgling culture to which I was lucky
enough to gain access. Looking back, it is surprising to see how many of these
then-absurd notions have become accepted truths, and disheartening to see how
many of the most optimistic appraisals of our future are still very far from being
realized.
Cyberia follows the lives and translates theexperiences of the first few people
who realized that our culture was about to take a leap into the unknown. Some of
them have succeeded beyond their wildest expectations and are now practically
household names. Others have met with catastrophe. Still others have simply faded
from view, their own contributions to the cyberian renaissance already completed.
The people in this book, and thousandsof others like them around the world,
understand the implications of our technologies on our culture, thought systems,
spiritual beliefs, and even our biological evolution. They still stand as the most
optimistic and forward-thinking appraisers of our civilization's fate. As we draw ever
nearer to the consensually hallucinatory reality for which these cyberians drew the
blueprints, theirimpressions of life on the edge become even more relevant for the
rest of us. And they make more sense.
Douglas Rushkoff
New York City, 1994

Introduction
Surfing the Learning Curve of Sisyphus
"On the most rudimentary level there is simply terror of feeling
like an immigrant in a place where your children are natives--where
you're always going to be behind the 8-ball because they can developthe technology faster than you can learn it. It's what I call the learning
curve of Sisyphus. And the only people who are going to be
comfortable with that are people who don't mind confusion and
ambiguity. I look at confusing circumstances as an opportunity--but
not everybody feels that way. That's not the standard neurotic
response. We've got a culture that's based on the ability ofpeople to
control everything. Once you start to embrace confusion as a way of
life, concomitant with that is the assumption that you really don't
control anything. At best it's a matter of surfing the whitewater.
--John Barlow, lyricist for the Grateful Dead and cofounder of the
Electronic Frontiers Foundation
The kid who handed me the brightly colored flyer must have figured I
was younger or atleast more open-minded than I really am. Or maybe he
had me pegged from the beginning. Sure, I had done a little "experimenting"
in college and had gotten my world view a bit expanded, but I was hardly
ready to immerse myself in a subculture as odd, or as influential, as this one
turned out to be.
The fractal-enhanced "map-point" leaflet announced a giant, illegal
party -- a "rave," where...