Source: https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/519/440
by Michael H. Goldhaber, 1997
“The expansion into cyberspace now underway parallels the expansion of European civilization into North and South America that followed Columbus’s discoveries, exactly 498 years before Tim Berners-Lee discovered, or rather invented, the Web. Europe back then in the 15th century was still ruled pretty much on feudal lines, and the feudal lords took it for granted that the new world would be a space for more of a feudal economy, with dukes and counts and barons and earls ruling over serfs throughout the newly discovered continents. They did in fact begin to set up that system, but it was not what turned out to flourish in the new space. Instead, the capitalist, market-based industrial economy, then just starting out, found the new soil much more congenial. Eventually it grew so strong in North America that, when it re-crossed the ocean, it finally completed its move to dominance in Western Europe and then elsewhere in the world”
“A conversation is primarily an exchange of attention. When you say “how are you?” for instance, you don’t really want to know, as a rule, but if whomever you’re talking with chooses to say how he or she is, it is more to get attention from you than to convey information. Even if this person genuinely thought you did want to know about her/his health, in answering, s/he would be attempting to pay attention to you. And even if you, in turn genuinely did want to know, the usual reason would be to pay attention to her/him.”