ABSTRACT
IF EDMUND BURKE HAD BELIEVED the French Revolution was happening at too dizzying a pace for critical reflection, he would never have written what amounts to one of the clearest and most prescient analyses of its deficiencies. In his Reflections on the Revolution in France, Burke observes:
This passage strikes the contemporary reader as déjà vu in our experiences with information and communications technology prognostication. Regardless of which way we turn-in policy circles, newspapers, or television-pundits and gurus of cyberspace are lavishly speculating on technology effects, often based on a tenuous grip of empirical evidence. Michael Benedikt suggests a more cautious approach: “before dedicating significant resources to creating cyberspace, we should want to know how might it look, how might we get around in it, and, most importantly, what might we usefully do there” (1991, 119).
