ABSTRACT
The Java ad is a fine example of the silicon-coated technological hyperbole that captured the public imagination at the gateway of the new millennium. Around the world this theory of mediated (digital) convergence not only has primed the pumps of a roiling speculative economic bubble, but also has forged a new cyberspace ideology whose Janus gods connectivity and interactivity have promised solutions to all our social problems. This chapter exposes the technological determinism that underwrote this ideology and proposes a more critical way of thinking about the impact of the virtual playgrounds it has helped to construct for our children.
