ABSTRACT
Legend has it that Senator Albert Gore Jr conceived the notion of the ‘information superhighway’, an infrastructure system analogous to the physical highways his father, Senator Albert Gore Sr, helped to create in the 1950s. While at first many suspicious commentators questioned the superhigh-way analogy, these high-speed communications networks are now often portrayed like the physical highways of the mid-twentieth century, tearing holes through communities. Such portrayals of media and cities share one overarching theme. It is a consistently pessimistic vision of how the rapidly growing use of information technologies will further exacerbate a decline of civic life and community. This perspective views public life in decline as accelerated by a culture of simulation. Physical spaces are replaced by digital ones—first television and film and now the Internet. 1
