August 1998

An appeal directed to the small minority of Cybrarians who in the middle of their intellectual and financial success seem to be disaffected and possibly in an undefinable state of anxiety about the reality they are in.

It is a paradox:

1. that an ephemerization technology, the Miniaturization/Complexity computer techne, generates new wealth that in turn finances a new wave of materialism courtesy of the production/consumption engine. The "savior" of intellection, the noosphere, is authoring the nemesis of the biosphere.

2. that Homo Carbonis might be engaged in self-extinction via the Homo Siliconis he is inventing, a biotechnology reaching back millions of years, made fearfully tragic by the World Wide Web.

3. that an optimized communication/information technology may generate a planetary hermitage engaged in a virtual reality and a technology promoting a hyper-segregated Homo Sapiens.

4. that a technology of learning via information can very easily turn into a technology of data inflation, constipation of information and mindless pernicious gossip causing a sclerosis of mind.

5. that a democratic technology might engender a split between the "haves" and the "have nots", a split of unprecedented cruelty.

6. that a fundamentally democratic technology, the World Wide Web, might cause a Luddite revolt against technology and its overpowering presence, a technocracy.