ABSTRACT
Charles Sides opens this collection by asking whether there is ever a time when information is too accurate or too available, and by extension too dangerous. Interestingly, though this question continues to haunt us in the aftermath of September 11, 2001, I believe our national conversation has remained conspicuously quiet in addressing it. Why? To begin with, as Sides also suggests, to entertain it directly with any seriousness requires that this question be accompanied by its root: Is there ever a time when free speech should be compromised, constrained, or reconceived? By cutting to the core of our most cherished rights and beliefs, even
opening such explicit public discussion would be threatening and perhaps anathema. It would be to call into question one of our most defining foundational principles. In the absence of such discussion, however, the nagging question remains, where I believe it is being quietly, implicitly, and contextually assuaged through the implementation and use of our rapidly evolving communication technologies; the mundane communication practices that comprise the “networks” of our personal, communal, and national lives; and the incipient transparency in public environments that results as communication technologies from surveillance equipment to cellular phones gradually become ubiquitous. Freedom of speech per se remains untouchable in the public arena, but the public sphere wherein it is alive and well is itself rapidly changing. In an effort to tease out the implications of this shift, the following discussion takes up the evolving interrelationship between our communication technologies and their use at the convergence of our increasingly interwoven virtual and physical environments.
