Today it's hard
to talk about what the next year will look like, let alone the next decade. As we
experience a cacophony of information coming in from all directions, inquiry
ceases and anxiety flavors all our actions. Dimly, we are aware of some change, a
fissure separating us from the past that appears more profound than we dare
acknowledge. But there's no time to stop and check what that might be. No time.
Increasingly, we live in a matrix of information, without context, without
pattern, disassociated from the past, rootless and unsettling. Traditional
markers are fading fast, and new ones are barely discernible over the
event-horizon. Like it or not, we are all now traveling Into the Matrix.
You've just found a beacon.
Electronic
Newsletter
meme: (pron. 'meem') A contagious idea that replicates like a virus, passed on
from mind to mind. Memes function the same way genes and viruses do, propagating
through communication networks and face-to-face contact between people. The root
of the word "memetics," a field of study which postulates that the meme is the
basic unit of cultural evolution. Examples of memes include melodies, icons,
fashion statements and phrases. You can get MEME delivered directly by email or read it
here. MEME propagates bi-weekly. The current issue is MEME 5.01, Death, Be Not In My Face, an excerpt from Alex Heard's new book Apocalypse Pretty Soon: Travels in End-Time America. You can also visit the MEME archive, which has issues 1.01 forward. You
can search all the
issues of MEME for whatever you want as well.
Community Memory
one-to-one is the home for Community Memory: Discussion List on the History of
Cyberspace. Wondering what Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak were doing in 1972,
or when e-mail was invented? You might find an answer by searching Community
Memory.
Interviews
face-to-face contains raw transcripts of interviews with people like MIT Media Lab Director Nicholas
Negroponte and US Secretary of Labor Robert Reich. The theme is technology and
social change. Interviews are presented whenever they happen, and previous
interviews are kept on file. 
Published Articles
dot-T-X-T presents my published thoughts on
cyberspace. Here you'll find the full text of articles I wrote for The New
York Times, The Economist, Wired, Harper's Bazaar, NetGuide, Marketing
Computers, and Lingua Franca.
All
About Me
Wondering who I am? My legal name is David Solomon
Bennahum. Here you'll find out more about why I write about cyberspace, and the
status of my next book, Extra Life: Coming of Age in Cyberspace,
to be published by Basic Books, in November 1998.
(c) David S. Bennahum. Direct comments,
bugs and so on to me at davidsol@panix.com. Icons designed by Jennifer Pinco.